csmccarron Posted July 22, 2023 Share Posted July 22, 2023 (edited) The disk below was an old parity disk that for some reason disabled. I ran a smart check and the disk is ok. I have attached a spare disk to replace the parity disk and that is rebuilding now. I would like to know how to remove the configuration so this disk becomes a disk with no format on it. How do you unformat an unused array disk? Thank you Edited July 22, 2023 by csmccarron Quote Link to comment
csmccarron Posted July 22, 2023 Author Share Posted July 22, 2023 So I found Unassigned Devices Preclear. I am running this now on the disk, if this works I will mark it as solved. Quote Link to comment
Veah Posted July 22, 2023 Share Posted July 22, 2023 If you want to reuse the disk, it has to have some format type. Just format it to match the filesystem you intend to use it on. NTFS, FAT, FAT32, ... there's a bunch. I use XFS for unraid storage and btrfs for my nvme 'worker' drives. If putting it back in your unraid system, wait until your current parity is finished rebuilding then pop your disk back in. Treat it like a new drive and let unraid format it for you. Will be like a new drive added to the array. Or replace a current drive, it works the same. 1 Quote Link to comment
Veah Posted July 22, 2023 Share Posted July 22, 2023 6 minutes ago, csmccarron said: So I found Unassigned Devices Preclear. I am running this now on the disk, if this works I will mark it as solved. That is handy to save on the building time after installing. Should get you to where you want to go. Now if I had only waited 6 more minutes, I'd not have typed up the above. hehe 1 Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted July 23, 2023 Share Posted July 23, 2023 FWIW, as a parity drive there would have been no file system / files / anything on it at all. Parity is simply a collection of bits used to reconstruct other drives in conjunction with the remaining drives. There is no filesystem associated with it. Adding it directly to the array would have had the OS automatically "clear" it in the background (if a parity disk was present) and then offer up to format it as XFS etc or as you noticed Preclear also does the "clearing" job. 1 Quote Link to comment
Solution csmccarron Posted July 23, 2023 Author Solution Share Posted July 23, 2023 After installing Uassigned Devices Plus and Unassigned Devices Preclear, I was able to get the drive back to an unformatted and clear disk. I first ran the Preclear, then using Uassigned Device Plus cleared the partitions. Quote Link to comment
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