I did a search and came up with nothing. I have 5 drives already in my system plus a parity. I just added 2 500 GB drives. I started the clearing ceremony at 3pm yesterday and at 11:30am today it's only at 80%. Is that normal? Thanks.

I did a search and came up with nothing. I have 5 drives already in my system plus a parity. I just added 2 500 GB drives. I started the clearing ceremony at 3pm yesterday and at 11:30am today it's only at 80%. Is that normal? Thanks.

Clearing of a 500 Gig drive should probably take 4 to 6 hours, perhaps less if fast drives are involved.

 

Odds are high one or more of your drives is running in a PIO mode.

 

Please capture a syslog, and attach it to your next post.  Do this before you reboot your server, otherwise, it will not contain the information that will be needed for analysis.

 

In the mean time, let the clearing continue.  It will get you to where your array is ablt to use the new disks.

 

Instructions for capturing the syslog are near the bottom of this page: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Viewing_the_System_Log

 

Joe L.

Thanks for the help Joe. Attached is my syslog.

It would be helpful if you could detail your hardware, especially motherboard, CPU, addon cards, and RAM.

 

The syslog has some items that may or may not be significant, but do trouble me.  The first is that it identifies the CPU as running at about 1.9GHz, then later identifies it as an 'Intel® Celeron® CPU 2.53GHz'.  Either you are seriously under clocking the CPU, or it is mis-identifying it, which isn't good.  Then the following ACPI errors and warnings appear:

Tower kernel: ACPI Warning (tbutils-0217): Incorrect checksum in table [  ^Eà] -  00, should be 25 [20070126]
Tower kernel: ACPI Error (tbinstal-0134): Table has invalid signature [  ^Eà], must be SSDT, PSDT or OEMx [20070126]
Tower kernel: ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed [\_PR_.CPU1._PDC] (Node f7c0e150), AE_BAD_SIGNATURE

 

I would recommend checking for an updated BIOS for this motherboard.

 

Your system appears to be using a VIA 8237 or compatible chipset, which is rather uncommon among unRAID users, so I can't comment on how well it performs with unRAID.  It does appear to be supported by the kernel.  It would be good to hear from any other user who is using a board with this chipset.

 

I'm guessing a bit here, but it looks like you have a SiI3114-based addon card.  On setup, it is producing this warning:

Tower kernel: sata_sil 0000:00:09.0: Applying R_ERR on DMA activate FIS errata fix

 

You might want to check on the Silicon Image web site for an updated (non-RAID) firmware for the chipset on this card.

 

The 2 drives connected to it are the 2 new drives, and are being cleared at a very slow rate, about 14 and 1/2 minutes per percent of clearing, with no change from the first percent to the 80th.  That seems way too slow to me, but there are no errors, warnings, or mis-configurations listed.  They were both setup as 'SATA link up 1.5 Gbps', and 'configured for UDMA/100', which is about as good as they can be configured, and there is no indication of a slowing down.

 

The onboard VIA network chipset took an excessively long time to setup, and is only giving you 100Mbps.  I would recommend adding a gigabit card, if the rest of your network can support it, for a significant boost in transfer speed.

 

Here's where you can see if you have the most up to date bios.  http://www.siimage.com/support/supportsearchresults.aspx?pid=28&cid=15&ctid=2&osid=0&

 

I have the 2 port version (SiI3112) and had to update my bios for the system to work properly.

 

Erik

Thanks for looking at the entire syslog, I appreciate it. Will adding a gigabit card or updated the BIOS or Sata Cards Firmeware ruin any of the data already on the drives? Meaning if I do all the updating will I have to mess with anything on the unraid?

 

Should I add a gigabit network card even though I don't have a gigabit network? Thanks.

 

 

P.S. What gigabit card do you recommend, I did a quick search on here and didn't find any.

OOPS forgot to add what equipment I have. I'm using a ECS P4M800Pro-M and I think I have a Intel P4 2.53 in there. The MOBO has built in NIC. For the sata cards I have a Rosewill RC-212 and a Rosewill RC-209-EX. I have 2GB of RAM, not sure the make. If it makes a difference I'll open up the case and check the RAM.

I just checked my unraid to see if it was finished and I guess it was in the clearing stage, but now it says the drives need to be formatted. I thought it was going to or was doing that. Should I be concerned or is that normal.

 

P.S. What firmware should I use for the sata cards the one for DOS or windows? And how do I flash it? I don't have a CD drive in the computer? Can I use a different USB Flash Drive?

I just checked my unraid to see if it was finished and I guess it was in the clearing stage, but now it says the drives need to be formatted. I thought it was going to or was doing that. Should I be concerned or is that normal.

 

P.S. What firmware should I use for the sata cards the one for DOS or windows? And how do I flash it? I don't have a CD drive in the computer? Can I use a different USB Flash Drive?

I can help with the first question.. yes, it is normal for it to ask about formatting.  It first cleared the drives (filled then with zeros) then added them to the array, as empty and all zeros, and now, it can safely format them without causing the parity on your other data to become invalid.

 

Someone else can help with the second. I don't have experience to draw upon.  Probably the second USB flash drive will be the answer.

Joe L.

I appreciate the help but I kind of need to keep this server running. So I tried updating the bios but I'm having problem with it recognizing the floppy.

 

So my question is this even though you guys see errors the system seems to be working normally once booted. It may take a long time to zero out a drive but as long as I don't have any errors should I just leave the system as is and continue to use it? If I don't get any errors on a parity check then I'm good to go right?

I appreciate the help but I kind of need to keep this server running. So I tried updating the bios but I'm having problem with it recognizing the floppy.

 

So my question is this even though you guys see errors the system seems to be working normally once booted. It may take a long time to zero out a drive but as long as I don't have any errors should I just leave the system as is and continue to use it? If I don't get any errors on a parity check then I'm good to go right?

Many of the newer motherboards can have their bios updated from a flash drive.  That might be an option.

 

The long time it takes to clear a drive might translate to a long time to write to it when moving files to it..  No matter, you should be safe to use the array.

 

Joe L.

Thanks the clearing took over 24 hours but after that the formatting took 5 minutes. My transfer speed is about 10 megs a second using FTP. If that's normal, which i think it is using 10/100, then I just leave the system alone.