Pre-clear and add the drives to the array. After the bad drives are empty, remove them and run "initconfig" or click the "New Config" button in version 5.

ok please forgive my ignorant questions but by preclear do you mean do this? http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Configuration_Tutorial#Preclearing_With_Screen ?

 

reading more on this i found this thread http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2817.0

 

i just added a 2tb drive and let unraid format it. i did not do any pre-clear is that bad? i thought just by adding it to the array it would do everything it needed but this appears to be wrong right? to the best of my knowledge i do not believe i have done any pre-clear to any of my drives 

UnRAID does prepare the drives but it does no testing and assumes that the drives work perfectly. Pre-clear will test the drive surfaces and pre-pare the drives as unRAID would. unRAID will be offline for several hours while it prepares a drive. A pre-cleared drive can be added to the array with only minutes of down time. More than 1 in 10 new drives will fail the pre-clear test and need to be RMAed. It may have detected the problems that your now having if it had been used.

damn ok thanks for pointing this out. so looks like i add hdd to unraid but do not assign it to the array. i run the preclear and if passes then i assign it? is this correct?

 

the most recent disk i bought i am currently copying the data off of it. how can i preclear that one? do i need to take it out and format it or do i format it within unraid or is it too late to preclear that one because its not brand new? thanks again

Any disk can be pre-cleared. The disk must not be assigned to the array. Enter "preclear_disk.sh -l" for a list of candidates.

thank you once again ill do this to my 1tb tonight then my 3tb saturday because i dont have it yet and once they are formatted i just add them to the array like normal? then i remove disk1 & 3 (the bad ones) and click "New Config" button and will this assign the disk numbers appropriately? by that i mean once i add the 2 new hdd it should be disk 6 and disk 7 then 1 and 3 will be removed will all the disk numbers change or is there something else i must do?

Add the new drives before removing the bad ones so you'll have space to copy the files off the bad ones.

ok i have a big problem. I was adding the 2 new hdd to my system and my sata data cable came out of the parity drive so i tried to put it back in execpt it didnt work. i looked at the connection and the "L" shape plastic thing that goes around the flat gold pins was inside the cable it self. i tried to put it back i even tried to keep it in the sata cable and put it back but it didnt work! can you believe this crap! ha so now i need a new parity drive...i have to add my 3tb because you have to add the largest drive correct? since i have those 2 other disk that are going bad how will this affect adding a new parity drive???

 

*Update* ok with enough messing with it i got the parity drive to work again. i will still replace it asap.

New cables?

no a piece physically broke off where you plug the cable into the parity drive. )= im doing the pre-clear right now looks like they said to do it 3 times to be safe? would you recommend that many times as well?

RMA the parity drive. It is no longer suitable for use and its contents are useless when a data drive has also failed.

i have been pre clearing several hdd several times thats why i havent posted anything but im having problems and i need help maybe i should start a new thread you tell me...

 

so obviously i have 2 hdd that i need to replace due to failing smart tests. then because a piece physically broke on my parity drive i need to replace that. also i need to add 3 hdd's that i have precleared. so i will have a total of 8 disks including parity.

 

i stopped the array...i unassigned the parity and i assined a WD 3TB hdd to pairty and it did a parity check or whatever now that is done it lists 26 errors and has a red dot...

 

***i am starting new thread for the parity issue***