7.2.3, ran the preclear plug-in and it finished successfully. If I add these disks to the array it will still do a normal clear (20h+), can I skip this step somehow and just go straight to adding them to the array, my shares and then building parity? These will be new disks to an existing array.

I saw a post saying 7.2.3 should see these as cleared already but that doesn't seem to be the case with the last one I precleared then added.

As long as you do not attempt to do anything to them after the Preclear finishes then they should add without Unraid going through a Clear process. When you add a ‘Clear’ disk to a new array slot the array should start without any parity rebuilding required as a clear disk does not affect parity. You then format them after adding to create an empty file system ready to receive files. A common mistake is to format the drives after the Preclear before adding them to the array not realising this destroys the ‘clear’ state.

Having said that there have been reports on some Unraid releases of the Clear state not being correctly recognised - not sure exactly which releases this applies to.

1 minute ago, itimpi said:

As long as you do not attempt to do anything to them after the Preclear finishes then they should add without Unraid going through a Clear process. When you add a ‘Clear’ disk to a new array slot the array should start without any parity rebuilding required as a clear disk does not affect parity. You then format them after adding to create an empty file system ready to receive files. A common mistake is to format the drives after the Preclear before adding them to the array not realising this destroys the ‘clear’ state.

Having said that there have been reports on some Unraid releases of the Clear state not being correctly recognised - not sure exactly which releases this applies to.

The clear state is what I was asking about as I read before 7.2.3 you had to reboot for unraid to see the flag. Perhaps I did format the last one though. I'll check this and see what happens. Thanks for the info.

3 minutes ago, rvcjew said:

The clear state is what I was asking about as I read before 7.2.3 you had to reboot for unraid to see the flag

It should not be required but probably worth doing just to play safe as only takes a few minutes whereas an unnecessary Clear would take hours.

7.2.3 should recognize the preclear signature immediately, as long as the disj is still precleared, you can post the diagnostics after assigning a disk to the array but before starting it to confirm.

I stopped the array, which paused the preclear of the other disk I'm going to add. Added the cleared disk and started the array. The preclearing disk resumed, the cleared disk added and asked to be formatted. I did that and it added to the array with no issues and skipped the clear phase. So seems to be working as intended.