mattw Posted November 12, 2023 Share Posted November 12, 2023 So, I am putting together an Unraid backup system. I cannot afford new drives, but acquired 4 WD 4000 Re drives. Kinda high hours, out of a datacenter environment. I have been running them through preclear, so far 1 passed and 2 have 2 pending sectors each. My question... I intend to set the passed drive up as parity and use the others as data drives. My main server has good drives in it, so not so critical here. I see loads of people installing used drives, I assume most used drives do not pass a preclear. What do you guys do in that case, use them or lose them? Quote Link to comment
Solution itimpi Posted November 12, 2023 Solution Share Posted November 12, 2023 If a drive will not pass a Preclear then you should not use the drive. If a drive fails during normal use of the array then Unraid requires all the remaining drives to be able to read error free to recover the contents if a failed drives. Pending sectors are never a good sign although it is possible that they can get reset to 0 during the Preclear process. as an alternative to pre-clear you can run the extended SMART test on the drives. If this fails a drive should not be used. Quote Link to comment
mattw Posted November 12, 2023 Author Share Posted November 12, 2023 That is what I figured... good to know. Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted November 12, 2023 Share Posted November 12, 2023 14 hours ago, mattw said: I assume most used drives do not pass a preclear. That is a bad assumption. A preclear isn't all that special, it just confirms that all sectors of the drive can be written to and read from without error. If a drive doesn't pass preclear, it's not trustworthy. Quote Link to comment
mattw Posted November 12, 2023 Author Share Posted November 12, 2023 I do not store that much, but want it to be reliable. I can find many "new" drives on ebay in the 4tb range. I tend to buy data center type drives, have always held up well for me in the past. In this size range, what is the preferred drive? I currently have a mix of WD gold Re drives and a Hitachi or 2. Quote Link to comment
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