It's not really the problem with the pre-clear that led me to question using unRAID.

 

It's more of having to utilize an entire disk for parity.  The more I think about it, the time saved if a drive goes bad will probably be worth it.  It's partially because now I only have 3 HDDs, so one third of my potential storage is being utilized by parity.  I just haven't had the same issues as others on here with HDD going bad.  Add that to the fact that all my data is easily recovered, either by ripping it again from disc, or downloading it, and ultimately I don't have much to lose by not having a backup.......besides my time.

 

I'll let the pre-clear complete and probably continue with the unRAID setup unless I find a compelling reason to choose something else.  Without 6TB of data now anyway, it's not really an issue.

 

 

The only backup solution that won't use hard disk space for parity is one that can't recover a failed disk. Something else that uses parity, like FreeNAS, is going to use the same amount of disk space for parity in a three disk setup like you have. You have to decide if the $100 something bucks it would cost you for 1 additional drive would really be more valuable than all the time you would have to spend recreating your data if you had a disk fail in a system with no parity. For most people I think their time and effort is worth a lot more than the cost of an additional disk.

 

So here's the final screen of the pre-clear.

 

Do I need to run another?  Went a lot quicker than anticipated, and I ran 3 drives simultaneously.

 

Edit:  Haha, as I read my post I realized it's not actually done.  Post-read in progress even though it says steps 10 of 10 done.  What will it read after this, and how do I need to evaluate and decide if I need to run again?

The post read will be the last part. It will also take longer than the rest of the preclear process. Take a look at the preclear report when it is finished and look for reallocated sectors and current pending sectors. You can also post it up for people to look at for you. Personally I always run 2 cycles unless the drive is one that I have had running in another system for some time.

Edit:  Haha, as I read my post I realized it's not actually done.  Post-read in progress even though it says steps 10 of 10 done.  What will it read after this, and how do I need to evaluate and decide if I need to run again?

 

The post-read generally takes longer than the pre-read and pre-clear steps together 

 

As for what to look for ... the summary will show what SMART parameters changed during the process and will summarize the changes in reallocated sector counts -- as long as all the counters are zero, and nothing significant changed in SMART (temperature is likely to be slightly different;  a few others may have small changes), then it's fine.    If you have any questions, just post the results here.

 

Thank you guys.

 

Great community here.  I appreciate the help as always and will post results with any questions.

Unless I'm missing something it looks like I'm good to go:

 

Aw gee, you only going to do one pass? 

I would make at least two more passes.

I would make at least two more passes.

 

Why do people do the pre clear process so many times?

It helps to stress the disk and eliminate the chance for failures that will occur in the drives early life. Everyone has different opinions on number of time. I personally only run two and all my failures have been in pass one, but you never know. Maybe if I ran one more my drive that just failed would have failed then instead of in my array.

because in addition to simply check the disk it also used as a stress test for the disk.

the preclear process pushes the disk to the limits of it's performance.

while cleaning it up, if you run the process several times (3-4) in a row there is a chance that if the disk will fail it will fail during this check and not  after you put it in an array and put data on it. (there is always a chance that disk might fail, but if it passes the preclear burn-in it might fail later in life  not to soon)

if you use new disk  it gives you a chance to return/exchnage  it under waranty.