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What is the preclear success rate with these WD Red 3TB drives? They seem to get many negative reviews...

Me and a friend bought 1 each, both were precleared 5x successfully.  Small sample size but if enough people chime in we'll have some sort of idea.

A few weeks ago, I precleared two with no problems. So far, so good.

You guys seriously preclear a drive five times? 

I do at least 3 passes. I've had drives pass the first pass but die on the second or third pass. Three is the lowest I'm willing to run through before I trust it with my valuable data.

It's my parity drive, I'd rather preclear 5 times and feel confident that it's okay.

It's my parity drive, I'd rather preclear 5 times and feel confident that it's okay.

 

Parity drive is not any more important than any other drive. In fact, if I lost two drives, I would rather the second was the parity.

It's my parity drive, I'd rather preclear 5 times and feel confident that it's okay.

 

Parity drive is not any more important than any other drive. In fact, if I lost two drives, I would rather the second was the parity.

 

Sure it's not a huge issue if the parity drive fails, and if you're going to lose 2 drives at the same time it's better if one of them is parity.  It is, however, a big deal if you think the parity drive is fine, a drive fails, and then you find out you can't rebuild the drive because your parity drive is bad. 

 

I backup all my important data to the cloud, but not large media files.  I look at the parity drive as something that will hopefully save me from re-ripping ~2TB of content if I experience a drive failure. 

 

I've had a drive that used to live in a small NAS appliance that failed on the 3rd preclear cycle, hence doing 5 preclear cycles.

 

Sure it's not a huge issue if the parity drive fails, and if you're going to lose 2 drives at the same time it's better if one of them is parity.  It is, however, a big deal if you think the parity drive is fine, a drive fails, and then you find out you can't rebuild the drive because your parity drive is bad. 

 

I backup all my important data to the cloud, but not large media files.  I look at the parity drive as something that will hopefully save me from re-ripping ~2TB of content if I experience a drive failure. 

 

I've had a drive that used to live in a small NAS appliance that failed on the 3rd preclear cycle, hence doing 5 preclear cycles.

 

Yep, better safe than sorry. I have 5x 3TB reds in my server...only precleared them once but I've been using them for several months now without any problems. So my experience with these drives has been pretty good, although they are a little more pricey than the Seagates and Toshibas (which I now prefer).

I precleared two Red drives (3 passes each) about a month ago and they have both been working in the array without issue.  No problems at all on the preclears with GPT on the Red drives.  My only 3TB/GPT-related preclear issues were when I upgraded Parity with a 7200 RPM 3TB  Hitachi drive.  That problem was related to the unRAID install (missing libraries) and not the drive itself.

I preclear using a 4 pass badblocks destructive test, then 1 pass of preclear. I'm happy with the results. I don't know if I'd thrash the disks with 5 preclear passes, but who's to say (other than Joe L) that what I do is any different.