Hey all, first time standing up a NAS, and wanted to shoot some questions to avoid shooting myself in the foot.

 

I'm planning on pre-clearing the drives I have (as it's my understanding that parity will be more or less a bit jumbled without it). However, all the stuff with AF has be a bit confused.

I currently have 4 drives:

1x WD FAEX 1TB (black)

1x WD FALS 1TB (black)

2x WD EFRX 1TB (red)

 

The red drives are going to be the meat of this build - the blacks are mostly to tide me over until I can afford to buy some more, larger reds.

In my disk settings on the web config, I have the default partition format set to MBR:4k Alligned. Running Beta 5-12.

 

When I run the preclear script on any of the drives without a -a/-A switch, it tells me that the drive will not be 4k-alligned. Setting the -A switch says that the drive will be 4k aligned. For performance, do I want to use the -A switch on all the drives? Just a few of them? Will my drives be 'compatible'? Sorry for the newbish questions... I think I see the benefits of aligning on 4k, but am not fully grasping the concept yet!

Welcome to the unRAID community! Here's a link to a tread about alignment, http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9936.90

And from that thread is a good quote from Joe L:

 

"Since 4k-allignment is compatible with ALL drives, use it.  Odds are your new drive does not  care.  The ONLY drive affected by alignment was one model of a seagate drive.  All others wok fine regardless of where the partition starts.  (Some unRAID users are anal about having everything configured identically... in this case, it does not matter, the array will not blow up, or lose data if you have a mix of drive partition alignment.)"

 

There may be more in one of the unRAID Wiki's. Google is your friend. If I was in your place, I would 4k align the drives....but that's just me! I know it takes time, but it's really a good idea to run PreClear 3 times! It will give the drives a good workout AND give you peace of mind the more you rely them!

When I run the preclear script on any of the drives without a -a/-A switch, it tells me that the drive will not be 4k-alligned. Setting the -A switch says that the drive will be 4k aligned. For performance, do I want to use the -A switch on all the drives? Just a few of them? Will my drives be 'compatible'? Sorry for the newbish questions... I think I see the benefits of aligning on 4k, but am not fully grasping the concept yet!

Make sure you use the current (latest) version of the preclear script.  (as of this post, 1.13)

Use the "-A" option, stop worrying, it was ONLY one model of one drive that did not perform as well.  (WD EARS)  All others worked well, and even the WD EARS worked fine for media use when partitioned starting on sector 63. (The Microsoft standard since nearly the beginning of time)

 

Use "-A" all the time.  (The -a and -A options are completely ignored on disks over 2.2TB, but they use a different partitioning scheme)

 

Joe L.