I have 3 3TB hdd's pre clearing at once and accessing the web interface is hit or miss. All three hdd's have been going for about 15 hours and are still on the first step and have slowed down to approx 4-6MB per second. Is this normal? I read where it could take 30 hours to complete the entire process so I assume that the first step wouldn't consume half of the time it takes. I dont have any logs for ya so I know I'm not going to get  expert help but just from others experience with it, has this happened to yall? I just dont want to let it run(for what is going to seem like days) and just to find out something went wrong. Thanks

Edit: These three drives are plugged directly to the motherboard.

Those speeds are not normal.  On the 3TB WD Red drive I preclearled last week the 3rd step of the process was the slowest and it averaged 40 MB/s

Am in the middle of a 3TB preclear (one drive, WD 3TB RED), I am at 37% of the second pass (I allways do 3) and the process has run 50 hours and 18 minutes at this time. Full preclear 3 passes should take around 100 hours.

So I may need to hit the power button on this pc. I dont have any array's going I'm just getting the drives ready for when I put this server together.

Think so... try and do one at a time.. first check smart results though, one of the drives might have a problem..

Thanks for your help. I sent the reboot command and it hung up. I had to hold the power button. Anyways, I'm looking at the smart results(I think) If you dont mind, see if this looks normal. I found this by going to> Unmenu, myMain, under infor i clicked (sm) and this is what pulled up.

smartctl -a -d ata /dev/sdc (--)

smartctl 5.40 2010-10-16 r3189 [i486-slackware-linux-gnu] (local build)

Copyright © 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

 

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===

Device Model:    ST3000DM001-9YN166

Serial Number:    Z1F168QN

Firmware Version: CC4B

User Capacity:    3,000,592,982,016 bytes

Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]

ATA Version is:  8

ATA Standard is:  ATA-8-ACS revision 4

Local Time is:    Fri Dec  7 09:39:22 2012 CST

SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.

SMART support is: Disabled

 

SMART Disabled. Use option -s with argument 'on' to enable it.

 

You'll have to enable SMART on that drive by typing

smartctl -s on /dev/sdc

before it will give you a smart report.

 

My success with multiple pre-clears with the standard settings are not that good either (all done on a 4 GB ram machine) 2 go ok, 3 not always.

There are threads to be found how to start preclear so it needs less memory.

 

When it fails you find the errors in the syslog, but that is gone after you use the powerbutton. So as long you have some command line access, save the syslog.

I attached a screenshot of my unmenu-mymain screen after restarting the preclear on two. Should I let these go then start the third, or start it now?

Unless you have specified the amount of memory being used by preclear I wouldn't run 3 3TB drives at once.

I did not. So I will not. Thanks for the advice and everyone's help and advice.