January 9, 200917 yr First I need to thank Joe for the preclear utility. Ran it once by itself and then did 2 cycles (the 2 cycles took 18h20m) on a Spinpoint 1GB drive I pulled from a acomdata Hybrid Drive (103.99 AR http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822216047) case so I could upgrade a SATA I drive and use it for offsite storage. After the preclear I shutdown swapped the drives and restarted. It was that easy. Unraid recognized the new drive in the old drives spot and I started the array so it could rebuild the drive. I can now access the data via the protected array while its building at 60,000kb/sec. It's reporting to take about 4 1/2 hours for the rebuild I'll let you know if that holds true. Erik
January 9, 200917 yr Joe L.'s prelcear tool looks great (haven't had a chance to use it personnally yet), but wanted to clarify something ... The tool does 2 things ... 1 - It exercises the drive on every sector and for a significant period of time to allow drive issues to be discovered before adding a drive to the array. The incidence of drive failure is relatively high for brand new drives versus drives that have been in service for a while. 2 - It clears the drive is a very specific way allowing you to ADD a drive to an array without unRAID's normal behavior of clearing the drive. (Clearing a drive takes hours and during this time the array is not usable (or it may just be a bit slower than normal, I don't really remember). For replacing a drive and you did everything exactly right. Exercising the new drive using the preclear tool is an excllent thing to do! But just wanted to clarify that you benefitted from the first feature but not the second. Whether the drive was cleared or not, unRAID is still going to re-write every sector on the disk, and the speed is not enhanced by using the preclear tool.
January 9, 200917 yr Joe L.'s prelcear tool looks great (haven't had a chance to use it personnally yet), but wanted to clarify something ... The tool does 2 things ... 1 - It exercises the drive on every sector and for a significant period of time to allow drive issues to be discovered before adding a drive to the array. The incidence of drive failure is relatively high for brand new drives versus drives that have been in service for a while. 2 - It clears the drive is a very specific way allowing you to ADD a drive to an array without unRAID's normal behavior of clearing the drive. (Clearing a drive takes hours and during this time the array is not usable (or it may just be a bit slower than normal, I don't really remember). For replacing a drive and you did everything exactly right. Exercising the new drive using the preclear tool is an excllent thing to do! But just wanted to clarify that you benefitted from the first feature but not the second. Whether the drive was cleared or not, unRAID is still going to re-write every sector on the disk, and the speed is not enhanced by using the preclear tool. The pre-clear script allows you to add an additional drive to the array without it being off-line for hours as the new disk is being cleared. When replacing an existing drive, the pre-clear script allows you burn-in and test the replacement drive. Since replacement drives are not cleared, but instead loaded with the reconstructed contents of the drive they are replacing, there is no "clearing" step needed by unraid, and it does not take the array off-line for hours while the replacement drive is written with the contents of the old drive it replaces. The pre-clear script, if used, does allow a bit more confidence, since if there was a defective sector needing re-allocation on the disk I'd rather it happen before I start writing my data to it. In any case, good luck with the new drive... From what I understand, you are not now rebuilding parity, but instead using parity and all the other data disks to rebuild the contents of the drive you replaced onto the new drive. Joe L.
January 9, 200917 yr Author When replacing an existing drive, the pre-clear script allows you burn-in and test the replacement drive. Exactly why I used it. I also change the wording Joe you are correct I'm not rebuilding parity but the drive itself. Erik
January 9, 200917 yr When replacing an existing drive, the pre-clear script allows you burn-in and test the replacement drive. Exactly why I used it. I also change the wording Joe you are correct I'm not rebuilding parity but the drive itself. Erik True... but you said you can use the "protected" array while the replacement drive is being rebuilt. That is incorrect. The array will not be "protected" again until the new drive is completely rebuilt. You can use the array while the new drive is being populated, you can even read and write to the new drive while it is being populated, but the entire array is not "protected" until the rebuild is finished. Joe L.
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