So - following my post re having problems preclearing a brand new 3TB that I wish to use as a larger Parity drive in my unRaid rebuild I RMA'ed the drive and got a recertified replacement from WD. It went through 3 successful preclears and so I rebooted my system and assigned the precleared 3TB as the Parity Drive and restarted the array.

Now I'm a little concerned that I never got the "format" option when I did this - other than initially advising me that the selected parity drive was not the right one the system simply started the Parity build. No "Format" option.

Have I wasted almost a week of pre clearing time? Have I done something stupid?

I could not add the 3TB to the array first as all my other drives are 2TB and so I would loose all parity (I guessed?!) and so I immediately selected it as Parity drive.

Fingers crossed I have done the right thing ... but would like a little bit of reassurance on this (or advice if I haven't)

Thanks again in anticipation

DaveK

So - following my post re having problems preclearing a brand new 3TB that I wish to use as a larger Parity drive in my unRaid rebuild I RMA'ed the drive and got a recertified replacement from WD. It went through 3 successful preclears and so I rebooted my system and assigned the precleared 3TB as the Parity Drive and restarted the array.

Now I'm a little concerned that I never got the "format" option when I did this - other than initially advising me that the selected parity drive was not the right one the system simply started the Parity build. No "Format" option.

Have I wasted almost a week of pre clearing time? Have I done something stupid?

I could not add the 3TB to the array first as all my other drives are 2TB and so I would loose all parity (I guessed?!) and so I immediately selected it as Parity drive.

Fingers crossed I have done the right thing ... but would like a little bit of reassurance on this (or advice if I haven't)

Thanks again in anticipation

DaveK

The parity drive does not contain a file-system, it only contains parity calculations, therefore it is never formatted.    The pre-clearing of a parity drive is performed to exercise it and to identify drives with early failures, it does nothing to shorten the time for the parity calculation process.

 

It does not sound like you did anything wrong.

 

Joe L.

Phew - great - Thanks Joe L.

I was going by this comment in the preclear instructions

"5. If the pre-cleared drive is being added to a new slot in the array, once the array is started you will be presented with a "Format" button.  Press the format button and within 30 seconds or so/a few minutes the new pre-cleared disk will have been formatted and added to your array"....

Really relieved by your response - last thing I wanted to do was waste all that pre-clear time!

Thanks again

Dave