May 7, 201313 yr Hey everyone! OK I have finished preclearing my drives 2x3TB WD Red's and 1x2TB WD Green. I have added one of the 3TB's and the 2TB to the array so I can bring my data over(I read to do the parity drive last because it can take a long time to transfer things while there is a parity drive active). First: The two drives that I added both say unformatted. Do I still need to format them even after I successfully ran preclear? Second: I'm trying to set up shares but can't get it working. I'm assuming it is because my drives are not formatted. Is this correct? Thanks!
May 7, 201313 yr Yes - the disks still need formatting. This initialises the file system on each disk and needs doing before data can be written to the drives. The pre-clear was all about zeroising most of the drives and testing them for errors.
May 7, 201313 yr Author Yes - the disks still need formatting. This initialises the file system on each disk and needs doing before data can be written to the drives. The pre-clear was all about zeroising most of the drives and testing them for errors. Thank you!
May 8, 201313 yr As noted, formatting simply initializes the file system => it only takes a couple minutes, as opposed to the hours it takes to clear the drive. Before setting up your shares, you should read about allocation method choices and split levels. For most purposes, you'll want to use high water allocation, and a split level of either 2 or 3 -- but the reality is you can simply leave split level blank and everything will work fine ... the only time a movie (or other) folder would end up crossing disk boundaries in that case is when the allocation level is causing a change of disks for the writes -- a pretty rare occurrence in practice.
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