Howdy, I've seen some posts on preparing new drives, but nothing really definite on the wiki, so I figured I'd ask.

The manual talks briefly about adding a new drive. I just did that and my file server was offline all night. It describes a two part process where the entire drive is set to all zeros, then it's formatted.

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Manual#Add_one_or_more_new_disks

 

I don't mind the waiting game, but how about some precentage of progress? There's nothing like that. I realize it might be hard to do inside the web GUI. How can I accomplish the same thing via the terminal window? Perhaps in a terminal window I could see a progress bar and not have to knock the whole server down...

 

you need to be root, I guess.

 

then, the command is simple:

 

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1M

 

that will fill /dev/hda with zeroes. BE CAREFUL!! If you select the wrong drive, all your data will be lost!!!

(You know that /dev/hda refers to the first harddisk in your system? you know that /dev/hdb or /dev/hdc point to the other drives? if you don't, PLEASE do not do this. Really.)

 

I discovered there are many devices listed under here:

ls /dev/sd*

In fact, six pairs called sda/sda1, sdb/sdb1 etc. And I have exactly six drives in there (including the parity and bootable flash)

 

Hmm, I think I'm going to stop horsing around here with root. I'm one of those dudes who knows just enough to really break something.

 

Ah, here's the pre-clear stuff:

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Add_Ons#Preclear_Disk

 

Anyways, what I'm looking for: easier, faster, more informative way to wipe a new hard drive, set it to all zeros, format it into the reiserfs file system, and add it to my array for use with unRaid.

 

Looks like preclear_disk.sh is the way to go.

 

Any pointers? How tos?

thanks!

Configuration tutorial is a good start.  And leads you to the path of destruction if you wish.

Yes I wish. 

 

Configuration tutorial is a good start.  And leads you to the path of destruction if you wish.

So looking over this:

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Configuration_Tutorial#Copying_Files_From_an_Internal_or_External_Hard_Drive

 

can I just copy files into /mnt/user/<thefolderIwant> and reiserfs will figure out where everything is going? Like RAID-wise?

yes...you can configure the user folder, included/excluded drives and allocation method.