wirenut Posted December 3, 2013 Share Posted December 3, 2013 The configuration tutorial reads If you are pre-clearing multiple drives it is recommended you also use the optional "-r" "-w" and "-b" options when preclearing multiple drives with these suggested values -r 65536 -w 65536 -b 2000. Is this still a valid/necessary suggestion with version 5? I am running v5.02 and have 8GB Ram installed and plan to clear three 4TB drives concurrently. I've done three 2TB drives in the past with no issue but thought I'd ask before I did my first 4TB drives. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted December 3, 2013 Share Posted December 3, 2013 I've always restricted myself to no more than 3-at-a-time, but have never used any of the optional parameters. I've done 3 4TB units at once with no problem on a system with 4GB of RAM. Quote Link to comment
johnodon Posted December 3, 2013 Share Posted December 3, 2013 Joe would be the person to ask. I haven't pre-cleared multiple drives in about a year and a half, but the last time I did it was 6 drives and I did not use any switches. Pre-clearing completed without issue. But again, wait for the author to chime in. John Quote Link to comment
wirenut Posted December 3, 2013 Author Share Posted December 3, 2013 Thanks for the responses. I wait hoping Joe has an opportunity to provide input. Quote Link to comment
nacat78 Posted December 4, 2013 Share Posted December 4, 2013 Using Putty/Screen Options I was able to use the default settings and preclear three 3TB simultaneously with no issues. If you use the screen options if the host computer that you are running putty on shuts down or restarts the preclear process with continue. Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted December 4, 2013 Share Posted December 4, 2013 The configuration tutorial reads If you are pre-clearing multiple drives it is recommended you also use the optional "-r" "-w" and "-b" options when preclearing multiple drives with these suggested values -r 65536 -w 65536 -b 2000. Is this still a valid/necessary suggestion with version 5? I am running v5.02 and have 8GB Ram installed and plan to clear three 4TB drives concurrently. I've done three 2TB drives in the past with no issue but thought I'd ask before I did my first 4TB drives. I'd use the extra parameters.... or risk running out of memory. (does not matter how much RAM you have, you only have s much "low" memory. Type "free -l" to see. Joe L. Quote Link to comment
wirenut Posted December 4, 2013 Author Share Posted December 4, 2013 The configuration tutorial reads If you are pre-clearing multiple drives it is recommended you also use the optional "-r" "-w" and "-b" options when preclearing multiple drives with these suggested values -r 65536 -w 65536 -b 2000. Is this still a valid/necessary suggestion with version 5? I am running v5.02 and have 8GB Ram installed and plan to clear three 4TB drives concurrently. I've done three 2TB drives in the past with no issue but thought I'd ask before I did my first 4TB drives. I'd use the extra parameters.... or risk running out of memory. (does not matter how much RAM you have, you only have s much "low" memory. Type "free -l" to see. Joe L. And the results are: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 16621676 10599556 6022120 0 220488 10108652 Low: 766500 459460 307040 High: 15855176 10140096 5715080 -/+ buffers/cache: 270416 16351260 Swap: 0 0 0 Not sure what it all means. Is it good, bad, average? Am I at risk of running out of memory if I didn't? To run it correctly for two passes i would type "preclear_disk.sh -r 65536 -w 65536 -b 2000 -c -2 /dev/sdX" Yes? Does using these extra parameters have any effect on the overall time it will take? [im guessing around 80 hours] Just want to learn more. Thanks for the reply Joe. Quote Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted December 4, 2013 Share Posted December 4, 2013 I've also been successfully preclearing 3x 4TB drives at a time without additional parameters on a 4GB machine. Pretty stock unRAID although! If you run plugins or cause any other load on the server it may get hairy. Quote Link to comment
wirenut Posted December 4, 2013 Author Share Posted December 4, 2013 I've also been successfully preclearing 3x 4TB drives at a time without additional parameters on a 4GB machine. Pretty stock unRAID although! If you run plugins or cause any other load on the server it may get hairy. pretty stock here also, unMenu is all. Quote Link to comment
neilt0 Posted December 4, 2013 Share Posted December 4, 2013 If you run RAM-hungry add-ons, you can run out of lowmem preclearing just one 4TB drive. That happened to me on my server with 8GB RAM. I ended up using my second server (with 3GB RAM) that has no add-ons and I precleared 3x 4TB drives simultaneously. I can't remember if I used any parameters. I don't think I did. Quote Link to comment
wirenut Posted December 6, 2013 Author Share Posted December 6, 2013 The drives arrived today [late but that's another story] I'm going with Joe's advice. He suggests it, he authored it, minimize the risk. Thanks for the input! Quote Link to comment
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