Okay... so I've managed to install: Unassigned devices, Unassigned devices plus...,and Unassigned devices Preclear APPS

I figured out how to switch Unassigned devices to Destructive mode so I could remove existing partitions then FINALLY start the Pre-Clear process on that questionable 14TB Drive.

Once all this finishes and I have access to the drive, do I just assign it as a single drive array then proceed to test by dumping some files to it and observing how it acts over a period of weeks? I ask because I am not schooled up in interpreting unRAID logs concerning the health of drives. All the drives in the BACKUP server were pulled from my 2 previous Windows Servers which ran HD Sentinel. No such weak sector issues existing at the time of tear down or I would not have used this drive.

I did not do a preclear on any drives in any of the 3 servers. I did however do a long FORMAT on all ten new 26TB drives I bought in November on a Windows workstation to make sure each drive was good. All 10 of these new drives make up the MAIN server. Is a preclear in the realm of "Best Practices" ? Possibly have I rushed things by not doing this on these servers making them less reliable?

Preclear is a good way to stress test writing to a drive before using it to store data.

The extended SMART test is also a good way to do a test on a drive in a none-destructive manner. You should not be using any drives that fail the extended SMART test.

5 minutes ago, MHzTweaker said:

Once all this finishes and I have access to the drive

Post a SMART report for it

22 hours ago, trurl said:

Preclear might get those pending sectors converted to reallocated sectors. Then you can see if it will pass an extended self-test.

Okay, I will post that Report once PreClear completes...... which could be some time. It looks like this procedure gives a drive a good beating. 🤕 I have no idea how long a 14TB drive takes to finish. It will be interesting to see how or if it can pass afterwards.

I just happen to be preclearing a new 10TB drive right now.

Did you include the preread and postread phases? You don't really need those to get sectors reallocated, but it might still be good for testing.

My 10TB preread finished in about 13 hours, but I expect the actual clear to take longer than that. And I am also doing postread.

LOL

There always seems to be some extra sauce I forget to order.

I'm not sure how thorough it is being cleared. I should have looked everything up before stomping the GAS pedal.

There are like 5 different steps

Step 1 - preread

Step 2 - clear

Step 3 - write preclear signature

Step 4 - verify preclear signature

Step 5 - postread

So you are doing 1 pass of all steps. Steps 3 and 4 don't take significant time.

My 10TB is 51% done with postread.

After 24 hours, its only 33% done with Zeroing (step 2)

I am thinking it will take 3 days to pre-clear this 14TB drive.

It's a good thing multiple drives can be done simultaneously.

The backup server is an i7 11700k with 64GB DDR4 and a 9305 24i HBA, workload rarely exceeds 5% CPU so I guess it really is just how fast this WD Red Pro can physically move internally.

No matter, I feel I am over much of the anxiety I had jumping head first into unRAID after using Windows Server for 10 years. Life goes on, meals get eaten and my grass still needs cutting while these servers chug along. I rarely ever had to do anything to the Windows servers except restart to install patches and blow the dust out once a year outside with my air compressor.

I am wondering how long some people here have had their servers running without a restart? I think periodic power outages here and limited UPS capacity would be my limiting factor. I have a 13k Watt generator I can plumb into the house but I'd never run servers off this dirty power even though I have both UPS's and PowerVAR Toroidial power filter systems in front of my servers and main rig desktop.

My 10TB finished in 39:13:51

48.5 hours into the pre-clear of the 14TB, I am 66% finished with Step 5 of 5 (Post-Read). So, it's looking like this afternoon sometime as an E.T.A. for completion.

Again, where and how should I investigate whether Pre-Clear has marked out those "8 weak sectors" revealed by the S.M.A.R.T. data and externally using HD Sentinel software? Obviously I can format the drive and see how the system reacts to it in "unassigned devices". I just wonder where in the hoard of REPORTS data this might be.

Also, thinking about the energy costs here to keep the BACKUPSERVER powered up with a 24 hour a day with a 200watt consumption, I am considering power the entire server off except for 1 day a week to backup changes made to the MAINSERVER. I've never had any kind of redundancy before unRAID except to keep 2 servers with same drive sized volumes live at all times. With 2 parity drives on what is a brand new machine and drives I am not sure it is necessary to keep the BACKUP server burning 200 watts of electricity for 7 days a week. Any thoughts on this?

27 minutes ago, MHzTweaker said:

where and how should I investigate whether Pre-Clear has marked out those "8 weak sectors" revealed by the S.M.A.R.T. data

On 4/2/2026 at 11:40 AM, trurl said:

Preclear might get those pending sectors converted to reallocated sectors. Then you can see if it will pass an extended self-test.

On 4/3/2026 at 10:01 AM, trurl said:

Post a SMART report for it

Click on the drive in Unassigned Devices (for example, mine is listed as dev2), then, under Attributes, your can see whether the Pending Sectors are now Reallocated Sectors. Under Self-Test, you can do a SMART extended self-test, and Download a SMART report.

If you want to preview these features while waiting for the preclear to finish, it works the same for all your drives, such as in the array. But, if a disk is spundown, you will have to spinup to get it to read the Attributes.

Okay, not seeing any indication of reallocation yet.... odd

Now it seems to say S.M.A.R.T. test are passed... what in the world?

Run another extended self-test when preclear is finished.

1 hour ago, MHzTweaker said:

Now it seems to say S.M.A.R.T. test are passed... what in the world?

The Passed status on that page is rarely meaningful as it only tends to say anything else when you are in danger of catastrophic failure.

To get a good indication of a drives health from SMART you need to run the extended test and only if that completes without error is it normally safe to assume the drive is OK.

6 hours ago, MHzTweaker said:

With 2 parity drives on what is a brand new machine and drives I am not sure it is necessary to keep the BACKUP server burning 200 watts of electricity for 7 days a week. Any thoughts on this?

That's a lot of power for backups. You might consider a power friendly rebuild with an N100 or something similar for backups.

@Veah I'm not sure ditching a perfectly good socket 1200 i7-11700k CPU and motherboard for an N100 surface mounted CPU/MB combo is going to work for me. Anything replacing it needs to support a PCIx 8 lane LSI 9305 HBA SAS card and a PCIx 4 lane dual ported 10gig NIC card. It could be possible to replace said 125w 11700k with a lesser CPU such as a 35w Pentium G6505T CPU, although the 11700k is drawing very little power at the 1 - 5% LOADS it sits at all the time. I say all this because I went down a power saving adventure with my Socket 2011-3 Xeon CPUs, replacing a 125w Xeon 14 core with something like a 45w Xeon 10 core and it only made less than a 20w difference in power draw. I also have a new Pentium Gold G-6400 CPU new in box, which claims 58w max draw. https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_socket-lga_1200

A core i5 11500T would be another 35w drop in replacement. A used replacement 11500T seems to sell for $80 on ePrey. A used Pentium G6505T for under $40. I have a TON of used motherboards, CPUs and hardware on hand. I own and have operated a computer services business for 20 years and have been in I.T. for over 40 years.

The main server power draw with ten 26TB drives and an Ultra 5 245k cpu is about 170w.

The BACKUP server power draw with 13 misc hard drives and the i7 11700k cpu swings between 216s and 243w with pre-clear running.

EDIT: There is also the possibility of both underclocking and undervolting the 11700k processor for power savings.

I'm 98% done with step 5 (Post Read) of pre-clear, so I will have some answers soon.

Edited April 5Apr 5 by MHzTweaker

I forgot to ask, is this SMART extended self-test going to take another 2 to 3 days? SMART Extended test started a few minutes ago.

I only power up my backup server to do backups, and those aren't important so I do them whenever. The important backups go offsite.

Self-test only shows progress every 10%, so don't think it is stuck if you don't see progress frequently. It won't take as long as the full preread, clear, postread you just did. Maybe more like just the clear portion.

Even less time if it fails.

Ok, thanks @trurl , copy that. Currently at 20%

..about to clock out for the night here. It could be done by late morning.

I really don't have an "Offsite" option but I could separate the servers from my home and put one in my outside workshop office structure. Everything here is 10gbit linked so it'd make no difference to them.

My offsite is just external drives that are stored offsite.