This was one of the external "backup" disks.  Got it for $199 at Best Buy.  Shortest a disk has stayed in the unRAID box yet.  This sux.

So I stopped the array and rebooted.  It came up and said the disk was missing.  I stopped the array again and it said the disk had been "replaced" and said to click start to bring the disks online and expand the array.  Something aint right here. 

its now doing a data rebuild and the estimated finish is 3 days.  The pre-clear when I put the disk in last week took that long so I can go with that.  I just am wondering why it did this hiccup.

 

Did you run preclears on those?

Yes.  I did on both of them.  It took 3 days to pre-clear them.

 

Check your cabling.

That is what I was thinking too.  I will be doing that on Monday (I work weekends) for sure. 

 

I will say that we had a power outage here.  Not sure if that would affect it.  I was copying some files to it.

I will say that we had a power outage here.  Not sure if that would affect it.  I was copying some files to it.

 

If you don't have an UPS on your server, that would be the first thing I would "fix".

Larger than 4TB drives I don't think are supported yet.  I'll ask Tom about this next week when he returns, but chances are this could be a driver issue.

 

You got that for $199?!  That seems ridiculously cheap!

I do have a nice APC UPS.

 

Disk prices have fallen.  I got this at Best Buy.  Bought two.  One for parity, one for data.  Was thinking on adding another until this.

Larger than 4TB drives I don't think are supported yet.

 

?? !!  I doubt that's an issue.  Once drives pass the 2TB threshold, the support should be good through the limits of the OS (the next hardware limit is WAY beyond anything that's going to be available anytime soon -- 9.4  zettabytes ... or 9.4 million TB).    I believe the 32-bit Linux drive size limit is 16TB, so that would be the max drive supported in v5;  but I'm not sure what the 64-bit Linux limit is, although it's clearly significantly larger than that (Windows supports up to 256TB per drive).

 

Note that the UnRAID system in question here has both the failed drive AND a 5TB parity drive.    Others on the forum are using 6TB drives as well ... so clearly drive size isn't the issue.

 

Yes.  I did on both of them.  It took 3 days to pre-clear them.

 

How many cycles? I've had 2 drives fail on the third cycle, so I now preclear my drives 5x.

 

 

Sent from a mobile device, sorry for any typos.

 

 

Whatever the system default is.  I know it took 3 or 4 days.  I did not use the script (didn't know about it at first) so the array was offline, etc.

If you did not use the preclear script then you ran 0 cycles. You pretty much trusted your data to the drive without any testing whatsoever.

 

I think the default on the script is only 1 cycle.

 

I've had multiple drives pass the first cycle but fail in cycles 2 or 3, so I make certain to always do at least 3 cycles.

 

The default is one cycle, which isn't enough to test the drive if you ask me.

 

Sent from a mobile device, sorry for any typos.

 

 

I have removed it and I am doing a 5 cycle pre-clear now.  Here is what it currently looks like.  I will need everyone's help with either a thumbs up or down on the results.  I will post them when complete...

I have removed it and I am doing a 5 cycle pre-clear now.  Here is what it currently looks like.

That is a pitiful pre-read speed. Is this drive still connected to the same port and cable that it red-balled on? If so, I'd change to a different controller and start the preclear again. At that speed, it will probably take more than a week per cycle to preclear. You say you removed it, but that statement isn't clear. Did you physically move it to a different computer, or just remove it from the assigned position in the array?

I have removed it and I am doing a 5 cycle pre-clear now.  Here is what it currently looks like.

That is a pitiful pre-read speed. Is this drive still connected to the same port and cable that it red-balled on? If so, I'd change to a different controller and start the preclear again. At that speed, it will probably take more than a week per cycle to preclear. You say you removed it, but that statement isn't clear. Did you physically move it to a different computer, or just remove it from the assigned position in the array?

 

I agree. I was getting triple that speed with  a USB 2.0 attached drive and even a relatively slow SATA drive should be in the 70s. 12 isn't just slow it clearly indicates a problem.

 

There is a diminishing return doing preclear cycles. Users indicate finding issues after 2 or 3 cycles, but my experience as been that one in enough. At 5 cycles you might literally be aging the drive by 2 years or more in use. But it's up to you. You definitely need to address your speed issue first though.

Aha!  Ok, I was just thinking that was the norm.  I can move it to another slot.  I left it in it's original slot.  ugh!  I will let everyone know my findings this evening.  I am GMT-5 and work weekends.

I moved the disk to another slot in the Icy Dock.  It is still doing 12.0MB/s read.  Hmmmmm.  Advice?

Can you connect it directly the a SATA port on the motherboard?

Holy shit!  The read is now doing 166 MB/s read.  Now I am really wondering what the hell is going on with this thing.  I have a backup of my data so I can mess with this array but going from 12MB/s read to 166 MB/s just by moving it to the motherboard sata port is friggin nuts.  Any ideas on what could be causing the huge slowdown?  Granted, I have not used the same cable with the Icy Dock expander or at least in it's same slot so I will have to do some troubleshooting to determine where the issue is.

Here is a screenshot with the latest progress...

This is what I would expect. Not sure the cause of your extreme slowdown before, but you should be able to isolate the problematic component.

Holy shit!  The read is now doing 166 MB/s read.  Now I am really wondering what the hell is going on with this thing.  I have a backup of my data so I can mess with this array but going from 12MB/s read to 166 MB/s just by moving it to the motherboard sata port is friggin nuts.  Any ideas on what could be causing the huge slowdown?  Granted, I have not used the same cable with the Icy Dock expander or at least in it's same slot so I will have to do some troubleshooting to determine where the issue is.

Whenever I've had that it has been a drive problem because I can move it to ANY computer and SATA port and it demonstrates the problem there as well. So I would let it finish the preclear and see if the slow section affects your speed any.  If it is too detrimental to the speed for you then RMA the drive if possible.  Performance is an option on the RMA process.