Preclear.sh results - Questions about your results? Post them here.

[Helmonder]

It is not recommended that you preclear the SSD... Technology is different then with a SATA drive.. Good idea to check the status of the SSD with a tool like SSDLife though..

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=17567.0

 

 

[Questhate]

Well don't I feel dumb! I just did two cycles. Whoops, hope I didn't break anything.

 

Thanks for the help.

[RobJ]

I finally upgraded to the Pro license so that I could use this 128GB SSD that a friend had lying around as my cache drive. This is the first time a preclear has failed. It says the failing SMART attribute is 4 Start_Stop_Count. Can someone help me interpret this?

 

SMART attribute 4, Start_Stop_Count, is not a critical attribute, so does not count as part of the SMART pass/fail testing.  You can tell which are critical attributes by the Type column of the SMART report, Pre-fail indicates a critical item, Old_age just indicates other non-critical items.  It looks to me as if the Threshhold for Start_Stop_Count should be 000 just like Load_Cycle_Count, which has also bottomed out.  These just indicate you have a lot of wear on this drive.  It appears the Power_On_Hours value is corrupted, perhaps also due to old age.  All other numbers look great, you should still have considerable life left in this drive.

 

By the way, this drive is a 160GB Seagate Momentus ST9160823AS drive, it is not an SSD.

[manny]

Hi, I just started with my first unRaid server and so far its been great. This forum has been extremely helpful and spent a lot of time here !!!

 

My first preclear just got completed , its WD RED 2TB NAS drive. When i looked at the report it seems to be fine, can someone please check and let me know if its really fine? I have combined all three reports in a single file..

 

Also have couple of questions,

 

- How many preclear i should do ? 2 or 3?

- Is it ok to run preclear again on the precleared disk? I mean i didn't use "c" function so by default preclear was done only once

 

Thanks again for all your help....I really don't think i would have done anything without this forum...thanks to all...

preclear_rpt.txt

[Helmonder]

Results look fine.

 

If you want you can preclear again, as long as the disk has not been made part if the array (read: as long as you have not added it in the unraid array webinterface).

 

Do as many as makes you feel ok, I do three.

[manny]

hi thanks for a quick reply, I think I made the mistake of adding both the drives to the array but not copied anything yet. Will this be an issue? Currently both disk1 and disk2 are red balled and showing "Missing"...

 

Let me explain what I did. Before preclearing the disks I add them to the array and started the array. So disk1 and disk 2 got assigned. Then i unassigned them which stopped the error stating "Too many missing drives". Now I have precleared one disk and waiting for the other one to be done so that I can assign them back to the array...

 

How do i fix my mistake? since you suggested 3 pre clear, I will wait for them to complete and then assign the drives? is that the the correct way? Please let me know and thanks a lot.

 

Also what is the impact on total time to preclear if I do both the disks at the same time? I have 8 GB memory and not many plugins, will i run into any memory issues?

[Joe L.]

- How many preclear i should do ? 2 or 3?

Completely up to you.  You could stop now if you like.

- Is it ok to run preclear again on the precleared disk? I mean i didn't use "c" function so by default preclear was done only once

You can run it again, either with or without the "-c" option.  (as many times as you like)  Eventually you'll want it in your array, so I'd only do one more pass, unless something shows up.

Thanks again for all your help....I really don't think i would have done anything without this forum...thanks to all...

You are welcome.

[manny]

Thanks a lot Joe, sure I will go ahead and run another round of preclear...Can you please let me know how can i fix the issue I mentioned in another post (just above urs)...

[Helmonder]

As long as the drives are part of the array you will not be able to preclear them. So remove them from the array and recreate parity. Then preclear and after success add to the array again.

[manny]

Thanks again, will do that. still 4 more hrs complete the first round...

[manny]

Hi , my next 2TB WD Red first preclear just got completed and the reports looks fine. Can someone please check and confirm....thanks a lot for the help....

preclear_rpt.txt

[Helmonder]

Looks fine !

[manny]

Thanks , running another round of preclear on both the disks in parallel...

[sheppp]

I just attempted to preclear 8 drives simultaneously via Putty/Screen on one SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 card (on a new UnRaid box). The process terminated prematurely after a couple of hours.

 

I attached the syslog. I'm not sure how to interpret it. The colors in UnMenu indicate that the problems are drive-related, however, I doubt that all 8 drives are bad.

 

Is this kind of result expected? If so, what do you think is the maximum number of drives that I can preclear at one time on one of these cards? Are you aware of other reasonably priced cards that can preclear more drives at once?

 

If you don't think that it is the card, could it be the new MB (SuperMicro X9SCM-F-O)?

 

Whatever input you have will be greatly appreciated.

syslog-2013-01-05_UR2_8_preclear_fail.txt

[Albin]

Joe thanks for the up to date preclear.sh tool!

 

I just did a preclear on (3) Seagate ST2000DM001-1CH164.

I ran the preclear on each drive at the same time (start time was only seconds apart)

2 of the drives sda and sdc were neck and neck the whole time (about 10 min total difference in run time)

sdd was over 2 hours of difference.

 

This is my first time using the preclear method (I should have done this on all my previous drives, but I just learned about this).

 

I got these drives from newegg and I was not impressed with the way they were packed so I may be over concerned about difference between the reports but sdd has a very big difference in the Seek_Error_Rate 8590654534 compared to the other drives at 745946 and 751820.  I am not sure if this value is critical or not.

 

I also was not sure if this type reading may be do to a data or power cable.

 

Thanks for any input on these reports.

 

Albin

 

sdd_preclear_rpt__Z2F0KS4Z_2013-01-05.txt

sda_preclear_rpt__Z1E2EQXS_2013-01-05.txt

sdc_preclear_rpt__Z1E2EYQD_2013-01-05.txt

[usurpator]

This is my first time I've ever done a preclear and I just wanted to check here if the results look ok?

 

Thx in advance!

preclear_results_00.txt

preclear_results_01.txt

[Helmonder]

Usraptors both look  fine

[Albin]

both look  fine

 

Just checking to see if you were replying to both of usurpator's reports, all three of my reports, or both usurpator and I at the same time. 

 

Thanks

 

Albin

[RobJ]

I just did a preclear on (3) Seagate ST2000DM001-1CH164.

I ran the preclear on each drive at the same time (start time was only seconds apart)

2 of the drives sda and sdc were neck and neck the whole time (about 10 min total difference in run time)

sdd was over 2 hours of difference.

 

I got these drives from newegg and I was not impressed with the way they were packed so I may be over concerned about difference between the reports but sdd has a very big difference in the Seek_Error_Rate 8590654534 compared to the other drives at 745946 and 751820.  I am not sure if this value is critical or not.

 

I also was not sure if this type reading may be do to a data or power cable.

 

I'll start by saying that all 3 drives look fine, no issues at all.

 

For the following, ignore the temperature SMART attributes (190 and 194), they have their own interpretation rules.  For the rest, you should not look at the Raw numbers for most SMART attributes, just the VALUE column (and perhaps the WORST column), which are an attempt by the manufacturer to indicate its own valuation of the numbers.  Generally the VALUE's will be from 1 to 100, but often they may be from 1 to 200, or even for a few Maxtors 1 to 253 (the 200's can be halved and considered as 100's).  That means you can generally think of them as percentages of perfect, as in 100 is considered factory perfect and 1 is bottomed-out bad and 50 is probably not very good.  So even though a Raw_Read_Error_Rate may have a very high raw number, if its VALUE is 100, then the drive manufacturer considers its read error rate to be perfectly normal.  I think we look too fast at the raw numbers, most of them should be ignored.  We should look first at all the 100's and/or 200's in the VALUE and WORST columns.

 

As to a possible cable issue, I see no evidence of that.  Would need the corresponding syslog to know for sure.

 

From here on, I'm moving from factual to speculative, trying to come up with ideas why one drive performed somewhat slower, even though all 3 drives were identical, and had the same firmware version.  The most likely reason is that different controller chipsets or busses were involved, and the slow drive was stuck with the slower hardware, was bullied out of a fair share of the I/O bandwidth available.  You could verify this by swapping its connection with one of the fast drives, and retesting.

 

But since we're already speculating ... we'll drift a little farther out in left field.  All 3 SMART reports were essentially identical, as would be expected by identical drives.  But there were 2 odd differences, one was that the slow drive had a far higher SEEK_ERROR_RATE raw number (which we should normally ignore!), and the other was that the slow drive reported a much longer time needed for offline data collection, a fact that is really strange for identical drives!  The fast drives sda and sdc reported they only need 80 seconds for offline data collection.  The slow drive sdd reports it needs 139 seconds!  I don't want to put too much importance on that, since the manufacturers do not provide any info on properly interpreting these numbers, but it does seem very odd, and perhaps indicative of a slower drive.  And while I really don't want to draw any conclusions from the SEEK_ERROR_RATE raw number, it plausibly *may* represent the need for many more seeks than the other drives, and seeks are relatively slow actions.  You might want to run a drive speed testing tool (HDTune?) on both the slow drive and a fast drive, and compare.

 

Now for some crazy speculation...  Manufacturers like to cut corners.  What if, to make 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, and 4TB drives, they just set up production lines for 4TB platter sets, and then when factory testing them, sell the partially defective ones as smaller drives.  So if one cannot support 4TB, determine how much it CAN support and sell it accordingly.  Now, what if a platter set had a bad region only in the faster tracks, but had 3TB available in the slower tracks?  You would create a good 3TB drive, but it would be significantly slower than the average 3TB drive.  No easy way to know for sure...

[Kryspy]

Question, currently pure learning my disks. Why do two of my 1 TB drives appear as hdx and my 1.5 TB as sdx?  All are SATA drives.

 

Kryspy

[Albin]

I just did a preclear on (3) Seagate ST2000DM001-1CH164.

I ran the preclear on each drive at the same time (start time was only seconds apart)

2 of the drives sda and sdc were neck and neck the whole time (about 10 min total difference in run time)

sdd was over 2 hours of difference.

 

I got these drives from newegg and I was not impressed with the way they were packed so I may be over concerned about difference between the reports but sdd has a very big difference in the Seek_Error_Rate 8590654534 compared to the other drives at 745946 and 751820.  I am not sure if this value is critical or not.

 

I also was not sure if this type reading may be do to a data or power cable.

 

I'll start by saying that all 3 drives look fine, no issues at all.

 

For the following, ignore the temperature SMART attributes (190 and 194), they have their own interpretation rules.  For the rest, you should not look at the Raw numbers for most SMART attributes, just the VALUE column (and perhaps the WORST column), which are an attempt by the manufacturer to indicate its own valuation of the numbers.  Generally the VALUE's will be from 1 to 100, but often they may be from 1 to 200, or even for a few Maxtors 1 to 253 (the 200's can be halved and considered as 100's).  That means you can generally think of them as percentages of perfect, as in 100 is considered factory perfect and 1 is bottomed-out bad and 50 is probably not very good.  So even though a Raw_Read_Error_Rate may have a very high raw number, if its VALUE is 100, then the drive manufacturer considers its read error rate to be perfectly normal.  I think we look too fast at the raw numbers, most of them should be ignored.  We should look first at all the 100's and/or 200's in the VALUE and WORST columns.

 

As to a possible cable issue, I see no evidence of that.  Would need the corresponding syslog to know for sure.

 

From here on, I'm moving from factual to speculative, trying to come up with ideas why one drive performed somewhat slower, even though all 3 drives were identical, and had the same firmware version.  The most likely reason is that different controller chipsets or busses were involved, and the slow drive was stuck with the slower hardware, was bullied out of a fair share of the I/O bandwidth available.  You could verify this by swapping its connection with one of the fast drives, and retesting.

 

But since we're already speculating ... we'll drift a little farther out in left field.  All 3 SMART reports were essentially identical, as would be expected by identical drives.  But there were 2 odd differences, one was that the slow drive had a far higher SEEK_ERROR_RATE raw number (which we should normally ignore!), and the other was that the slow drive reported a much longer time needed for offline data collection, a fact that is really strange for identical drives!  The fast drives sda and sdc reported they only need 80 seconds for offline data collection.  The slow drive sdd reports it needs 139 seconds!  I don't want to put too much importance on that, since the manufacturers do not provide any info on properly interpreting these numbers, but it does seem very odd, and perhaps indicative of a slower drive.  And while I really don't want to draw any conclusions from the SEEK_ERROR_RATE raw number, it plausibly *may* represent the need for many more seeks than the other drives, and seeks are relatively slow actions.  You might want to run a drive speed testing tool (HDTune?) on both the slow drive and a fast drive, and compare.

 

Now for some crazy speculation...  Manufacturers like to cut corners.  What if, to make 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, and 4TB drives, they just set up production lines for 4TB platter sets, and then when factory testing them, sell the partially defective ones as smaller drives.  So if one cannot support 4TB, determine how much it CAN support and sell it accordingly.  Now, what if a platter set had a bad region only in the faster tracks, but had 3TB available in the slower tracks?  You would create a good 3TB drive, but it would be significantly slower than the average 3TB drive.  No easy way to know for sure...

 

Rob,

 

Thanks for your reply / post. 

 

I can't remember if I discovered that I had a bad memory stick before or after I ran the preclear.  Could this would have caused bad results (if the bad stick was still in the machine)?  Regardless, I am waiting for the new memory sticks to arrive, and then I am going to run the test again.  Should I run the test with all the drives connected to the same slots, and review the results (maybe there is a chance the results would be different.... I am not sure how memory is allocated during the testing prior.... maybe sdd got allocated bad sections of memory? I am Totally guessing on this).  Then if I get similar results to those posted, I could switch the drives around (different slots), and see what type of results I get.

 

By the way all the drives are connected to on board SATA slots.  My first thought is that they should all have similar band widths, but maybe certain slots are designed, or are designated for higher bandwidth.

 

Albin

[RobJ]

Question, currently pure learning my disks. Why do two of my 1 TB drives appear as hdx and my 1.5 TB as sdx?  All are SATA drives.

 

Kryspy

 

In your BIOS setup, make sure that both the onboard and addon SATA controllers are configured for native SATA mode, preferably AHCI mode, *NOT* in an IDE emulation mode.  Having drive symbols appear as hdx usually means they are IDE drives or configured to emulate IDE drives.

[RobJ]

I can't remember if I discovered that I had a bad memory stick before or after I ran the preclear.  Could this would have caused bad results (if the bad stick was still in the machine)?  Regardless, I am waiting for the new memory sticks to arrive, and then I am going to run the test again.  Should I run the test with all the drives connected to the same slots, and review the results (maybe there is a chance the results would be different.... I am not sure how memory is allocated during the testing prior.... maybe sdd got allocated bad sections of memory? I am Totally guessing on this).  Then if I get similar results to those posted, I could switch the drives around (different slots), and see what type of results I get.

I don't see any connection with memory here.  I'll just add though that if I have any suspicions at all about the memory of a computer, then I consider that computer to be completely unusable!  Period.  When you get the new memory sticks, test them with memtest overnight, until you are completely confident in them.

 

By the way all the drives are connected to on board SATA slots.  My first thought is that they should all have similar band widths, but maybe certain slots are designed, or are designated for higher bandwidth.

That pretty well rules out bandwidth differences, unless there was an issue with that specific port or cable.  You might try preclearing the slow drive one more time connected to the cable and port used by one of the faster drives.  And if you have the syslog during the slow drives preclear, check it for any drive-related errors/exceptions.

[Albin]

I can't remember if I discovered that I had a bad memory stick before or after I ran the preclear.  Could this would have caused bad results (if the bad stick was still in the machine)?  Regardless, I am waiting for the new memory sticks to arrive, and then I am going to run the test again.  Should I run the test with all the drives connected to the same slots, and review the results (maybe there is a chance the results would be different.... I am not sure how memory is allocated during the testing prior.... maybe sdd got allocated bad sections of memory? I am Totally guessing on this).  Then if I get similar results to those posted, I could switch the drives around (different slots), and see what type of results I get.

I don't see any connection with memory here.  I'll just add though that if I have any suspicions at all about the memory of a computer, then I consider that computer to be completely unusable!  Period.  When you get the new memory sticks, test them with memtest overnight, until you are completely confident in them.

 

By the way all the drives are connected to on board SATA slots.  My first thought is that they should all have similar band widths, but maybe certain slots are designed, or are designated for higher bandwidth.

That pretty well rules out bandwidth differences, unless there was an issue with that specific port or cable.  You might try preclearing the slow drive one more time connected to the cable and port used by one of the faster drives.  And if you have the syslog during the slow drives preclear, check it for any drive-related errors/exceptions.

 

Rob,

 

Very helpful information... thanks.  I will test the Memory sticks with memtest and when comfortable I will move forward with test as yoiu recommended for the drives.

 

Albin

[Mettbrot]

I just finished preclearing my 3 TB drive but I am a little concerned because I have been told that 'reallocation' is a bad thing. I attached my syslog, but here is the part that made me thinking:

 

Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]: ============================================================================ (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]: ** Changed attributes in files: /tmp/smart_start_sdb  /tmp/smart_finish_sdb (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:                 ATTRIBUTE   NEW_VAL OLD_VAL FAILURE_THRESHOLD STATUS      RAW_VALUE (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:       Raw_Read_Error_Rate =   120     117            6        ok          241855832 (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:          Spin_Retry_Count =   100     100           97        near_thresh 0 (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:          End-to-End_Error =   100     100           99        near_thresh 0 (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:        Reported_Uncorrect =    64     100            0        ok          36 (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:   Airflow_Temperature_Cel =    64      71           45        near_thresh 36 (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:       Temperature_Celsius =    36      29            0        ok          36 (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:  No SMART attributes are FAILING_NOW (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:  (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:  0 sectors were pending re-allocation before the start of the preclear. (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:  16 sectors were pending re-allocation after pre-read in cycle 1 of 1. (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:  0 sectors were pending re-allocation after zero of disk in cycle 1 of 1. (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:  0 sectors are pending re-allocation at the end of the preclear, (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:     the number of sectors pending re-allocation did not change. (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:  0 sectors had been re-allocated before the start of the preclear. (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:  0 sectors are re-allocated at the end of the preclear, (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]:     the number of sectors re-allocated did not change.  (Misc)
Jan 13 00:15:55 Tower preclear_disk-diff[11408]: ============================================================================ (Misc)

syslog.txt