February 23, 201214 yr For some reason my HDD aren't mounting. They mounted the other day but had been formatted to MBR unaligned and I was told they needed to be set to MBR 4k. So i ran preclear with "-z" and cleared out my drives. Now my drives show up and I can assign them to disk 1,2,3 etc.. but when i start the array they don't mount. Under FREE it says MOUNTING.. and shows the READS. I let it mount for 30 minutes and refreshed the gui but still didn't mount. Just goes back to the start button to start array. Here is a SYSLOG Rajahal had me make. Hope someone has some advice.
February 23, 201214 yr For some reason my HDD aren't mounting. They mounted the other day but had been formatted to MBR unaligned and I was told they needed to be set to MBR 4k. So i ran preclear with "-z" and cleared out my drives. Now my drives show up and I can assign them to disk 1,2,3 etc.. but when i start the array they don't mount. Under FREE it says MOUNTING.. and shows the READS. I let it mount for 30 minutes and refreshed the gui but still didn't mount. Just goes back to the start button to start array. Here is a SYSLOG Rajahal had me make. Hope someone has some advice. 1. Unless you have an EARS drive, you were misled. Only those drives without a jumper need to be aligned at a 4k boundary for best performance. (I do not think you have any EARS drives.) 2. running the -z option zeros the master boot record and deletes any existing partitioning. 3. unless you set a new disk configuration (and let unRAID partition those disks) or partition the disks yourself as expected by unRAID (by using the preclear_disk.sh script, or some equivalent "mkmbr" utility), there is no partition defined on those disks, therefore, they cannot be mounted. I would use the "initconfig" command to set a new disk configuration. (realize that what you have done will cause the loss of all the data on those disks... unless you restore the partitioning the way they were before you zeroed out the MBR.
February 23, 201214 yr 1. Unless you have an EARS drive, you were misled. Only those drives without a jumper need to be aligned at a 4k boundary for best performance. (I do not think you have any EARS drives.) Unless I've been misinformed for quite a while, I was under the impression that ALL drives should be 4k aligned with the single exception of a WD EARS with a jumper installed, which should be unaligned (since the jumper compensates and actually aligns the drives). You are correct that Chrisx510 has no WD EARS drives, and all of his advanced format drives were set to unaligned. I instructed him to use preclear's -z option to zero the MBR and re-do it as 4k aligned to get the best performance out of his drives. 3. unless you set a new disk configuration (and let unRAID partition those disks) or partition the disks yourself as expected by unRAID (by using the preclear_disk.sh script, or some equivalent "mkmbr" utility), there is no partition defined on those disks, therefore, they cannot be mounted. That makes sense, but why didn't Chrisx510 see the 'format' button appear after zeroing the MBR? I thought that unRAID would recognize the drives as unformatted and offer to format them before the array could be started. Chrisx510: since your data drives are all empty anyway, there's no risk in running the initconfig command as Joe L. suggested. You run it through the system console or telnet, just like preclear. Simply log in with root, then type initconfig then confirm with Yes. You should then be able to format your drives with the 'format' button, then finally start the array and another parity sync. Once the parity sync completes, run a parity check as well. Once both complete, you can start transferring your data to the server.
February 23, 201214 yr Author Yes I'm not using any EARS drives. Only EARX and 2 Seagates that are advanced drives. So do I set it at mbr 4k or mbr unaligned? Joe says mbr unaligned and Raj you say 4k.... Which one do I go with.... I don't have a parity drive yet. I just have the data drives installed so I can transfer my files quicker. Once my files are transferred I will then add a parity and cache drive.
February 24, 201214 yr Author btw the rest of my drives that will be installed in my unRAID server will be WD EADS. Currently being used in my WHS but will put them in my unRAID server once files are all transferred. I don't believe EADS are advance drives..
February 24, 201214 yr 1. Unless you have an EARS drive, you were misled. Only those drives without a jumper need to be aligned at a 4k boundary for best performance. (I do not think you have any EARS drives.) Unless I've been misinformed for quite a while, I was under the impression that ALL drives should be 4k aligned with the single exception of a WD EARS with a jumper installed, which should be unaligned (since the jumper compensates and actually aligns the drives). You are correct that Chrisx510 has no WD EARS drives, and all of his advanced format drives were set to unaligned. I instructed him to use preclear's -z option to zero the MBR and re-do it as 4k aligned to get the best performance out of his drives. You are mis-informed. The only drive I'm aware of that performed worse in some cases (when asked to address lots of small files) when not aligned on a 4k boundary was an EARS drive, and that only if the jumper was not installed to electrically add 1 to the requested sector was not installed. All other drives work perfectly fine with the partition starting at any sector, even those not a multiple of 4096 bytes. Even the EARS drive will work fine aligned to something other than a multiple of 4096 bytes... as many have run their servers for months/years that way. They are not anal about performance, and the performance is more than sufficient for serving movies/music. Therefore, if you format all drives at a multiple of 4096 bytes, all will work... because most drives are not designed as poorly as the EARS drives. 3. unless you set a new disk configuration (and let unRAID partition those disks) or partition the disks yourself as expected by unRAID (by using the preclear_disk.sh script, or some equivalent "mkmbr" utility), there is no partition defined on those disks, therefore, they cannot be mounted. That makes sense, but why didn't Chrisx510 see the 'format' button appear after zeroing the MBR? I thought that unRAID would recognize the drives as unformatted and offer to format them before the array could be started. Probably because the partitions ARE expected. They must exist in order for a format command to be run on them. You wiped out the partitions by zeroing out the MBRs. unRAID thinks the disks are part of its array, since you did not invoke the "initconfig" command. It is acting as best it can, given what you've done to it. Chrisx510: since your data drives are all empty anyway, there's no risk in running the initconfig command as Joe L. suggested. You run it through the system console or telnet, just like preclear. Simply log in with root, then type initconfig then confirm with Yes. You should then be able to format your drives with the 'format' button, then finally start the array and another parity sync. Once the parity sync completes, run a parity check as well. Once both complete, you can start transferring your data to the server. Exactly.
February 24, 201214 yr Ok so I run initconfig and change the format back to mbr unaligned? I fear you are being anal about it too. Set the default as 4k aligned. Unless you purchase an EARS drive, don't do anything special other than to make sure the EARS drive does NOT have a jumper installed. Forget the ability to set the partition start location exists, and get on with enjoying your server. Use the initconfig command. Answer "Yes" (Capital "Y" and lower case "es") to its prompt. Press the format button.
February 24, 201214 yr Author Ok so I run initconfig and change the format back to mbr unaligned? I fear you are being anal about it too. Set the default as 4k aligned. Unless you purchase an EARS drive, don't do anything special other than to make sure the EARS drive does NOT have a jumper installed. Forget the ability to set the partition start location exists, and get on with enjoying your server. Use the initconfig command. Answer "Yes" (Capital "Y" and lower case "es") to its prompt. Press the format button. Ok I will do this right now.
February 24, 201214 yr Author Ok guys just ran initconfig and formatted the drives to 4k. Everything is up and running again. I'll start transferring my files in a bit with teracopy. Thanks for the help!
February 24, 201214 yr Geeze, why the crap about the drive alignment??? Just keep it simple - format all drives as 4k aligned except a WD advanced format drive with a jumper. Follow this rule and you can't screw it up. Peter
February 24, 201214 yr Author Geeze, why the crap about the drive alignment??? Just keep it simple - format all drives as 4k aligned except a WD advanced format drive with a jumper. Follow this rule and you can't screw it up. Peter will do!
February 24, 201214 yr Geeze, why the crap about the drive alignment??? Just keep it simple - format all drives as 4k aligned except a WD advanced format drive with a jumper. Follow this rule and you can't screw it up. Peter And if you have a working drive in your array, formatted starting on sector 63, leave it alone. It is a far bigger headache to re-partition and maintain your data then you might want to get into, and the potential gain not enough to warrant the trouble.
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