Hi all,

so the last time I added a new drive to unRAID, the system did a clear of the drive automatically (is this the same as the command line pre-clear? ) and it meant the system was down for about 8 - 10 hours. Is this the way adding a drive in 5.05 now works? I remember in earlier versions I could take the chance and not pre-clear a drive and it would just get added and everything would be back up and running in less than 15 minutes.

 

What is the fastest way to add a drive? If I pre-clear in a telnet window and want to check on that pre-clear from a new Telnet window, is this possible??

 

I want to have as little down time as possible for the server

If you use preclear, then your array does not have to be off line.  Granted the preclear will take a long time, but its a good way to test your drive.

 

You can also access the preclear session if you use Screen.

 

Below are the links to both screen and to the page with directions for preclear with screen

 

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Configuration_Tutorial#Install_Screen

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Configuration_Tutorial#Preclearing_With_Screen

So when I try to follow the guide to install unmenu I get an error saying it is an invalid directory. I can see the directory of the flash drive. Any idea why it is not finding the directory when I enter

/cd boot/unmenu

 

 

So when I try to follow the guide to install unmenu I get an error saying it is an invalid directory. I can see the directory of the flash drive. Any idea why it is not finding the directory when I enter

/cd boot/unmenu

perhaps because the command is

cd /boot/unmenu

not

/cd boot/unmenu

 

or, you  never first created the directory with a command like:

mkdir /boot/unmenu

So creating the directory inside the telnet window worked but now when I try to run the command below I get "no such file or directory"

 

./unmenu_install  -i -d /boot/unmenu

So creating the directory inside the telnet window worked but now when I try to run the command below I get "no such file or directory"

 

./unmenu_install  -i -d /boot/unmenu

then the unmenu_install program is not in the current directory.

to determine your current directory type

pwd

 

to see what is in the current directory type:

ls -l

 

Joe L.

Thank you for your patience.

I finally got unMenu installed and then I screen installed. I followed the screen and then the pre-clear instructions and preclear is showing 80% of the read test complete this morning.

Thanks again for all your help

Good deal.  Remember that the preclear will take a long time (depending on drive size).  And i have been running 3 passes of preclear to make sure the drive is solid.  Again, takes a long time (if i remember correctly about 3 days), but at least at the end you know the drive is pretty solid.

Yes, my expectations are that preclear takes a while to run. Un menu does make it easier to monitor the process though.

Am I correct in assuming Screen is what sends the preclear update to  the Unmenu dashboard?

Hmmm...not sure as I've not used that feature. Maybe someone else can comment on that.  I generally just monitor the status from screen.

Yes, my expectations are that preclear takes a while to run. Un menu does make it easier to monitor the process though.

Am I correct in assuming Screen is what sends the preclear update to  the Unmenu dashboard?

Screen just spawns another terminal session that will continue to run in the background when disconnected and then you can later reconnect to it. It is useful for anything that you expect to take a long time. If you disconnect but you are not running screen, then anything that you have running, such as preclear, will terminate. People often run multiple preclears in multiple screen sessions.

 

Don't know exactly how unMenu monitors preclear.

Out of interest....

 

Is there any reason why 3x pre-clears appears to be the accepted standard? Is there any evidence to suggest this is worth doing?

 

I've used second hand drives in my server, so I decided the fact that they are about 2 years old and have been in use all that time is testing enough!

 

Would it not make more sense to run 1x pre-clear and then check the SMART results, then if you have a problem run pre-clear again to see if it rectifies it?

I've been using 3 passes on new drives.  If youve got used drives that pass the preclear with no errors, etc. then maybe 1 pass is enough.

So 3 passes pretty much equals 3 days of constant spinning for the drive?

 

Sent from my SM-P600 using Tapatalk

 

 

So 3 passes pretty much equals 3 days of constant spinning for the drive?

 

Sent from my SM-P600 using Tapatalk

Depends on the size.  My 4TB drives took close to 100 hours (95 I think) for 3 cycles which is 4 days give or take a bit.

Don't know exactly how unMenu monitors preclear.

Technically it is in MyMenu (part of unMenu) see attached graphic which is from my preclear station.

 

So 3 passes pretty much equals 3 days of constant spinning for the drive?

Heh. I realize server grade hardware is different, but I have a PC at my shop that has been spun up pretty much 24/7/365 for the better part of 11 years with the same hard drive. It's a Hitachi 10K RPM 36GB SCSI drive.

Am I correct in assuming Screen is what sends the preclear update to  the Unmenu dashboard?

No.  It allows you to disconnect the telnet session and have the preclear process continue.

 

It has absolutely nothing to do with unMENU's mymain plugin monitoring the progress.

 

Joe L.