darkside40 Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 Hi there, two days ago i had the very first bad drive in my unRaid System, which was blocked because of 4 write failures to it. Unfortunately i had no replacement drive at hand so i had to go to a local store to buy one and to preclear it, before i could use it. Good thing that there was no additional drive failure in that time. Nevertheless, now i would like to test the drive i had removed from the system and i am asking myself how to do that on a spare linux system, which must not have unRaid installed. Can i use the preclear script for it, or is there (maybe a faster) alternative? How do you do something like this? Link to comment
Frank1940 Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 I don't know if the preclear script will run in a standard Linux environment. You might want to pose that question in this thread and JoeL will probably get back to you with an answer: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4068.0 You do know that you could run unRAID on that Linux box. Use version 5, to avoid registration hassles with the the key file. Just don't assign any drives or start the array!!! Be sure that you have the serial number of the drive you want to preclear written down so that you do the right drive. Link to comment
JonathanM Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 You do know that you could run unRAID on that Linux box. Use version 5, to avoid registration hassles with the the key file. Just don't assign any drives or start the array!!! Be sure that you have the serial number of the drive you want to preclear written down so that you do the right drive. You can run preclear without requesting a trial key on V6. The key allows you to START the array, which you don't want to do. Other than that, I'd recommend disconnecting any existing system hard drives temporarily, that way it's crystal clear which drive you are operating on. No mucking about with verifying serial numbers necessary, just be sure the drive you want to preclear is the ONLY drive connected besides the USB boot stick. You can even use the preclear plugin wrapper to do everything from the GUI. The only even remotely hard part is downloading the actual preclear script itself into the correct folder for the plugin to find it, and that's spelled out explicitly in the plugin thread. It's no longer necessary to drop to the command line to preclear, unless you want to use options not controlled by the plugin wrapper. Link to comment
darkside40 Posted July 13, 2015 Author Share Posted July 13, 2015 I have something like a preclear box system running. That is not a problem. My question was more directed to the topic if the preclear script is a suitable solution for what inwant to do or if there is a better solution out there in the linux world. Link to comment
JonathanM Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 I have something like a preclear box system running. That is not a problem. My question was more directed to the topic if the preclear script is a suitable solution for what inwant to do or if there is a better solution out there in the linux world. The more thorough the diagnostics, the longer they will take. Preclear is one very suitable way to test drives, there are others, but preclear is a known quantity around here, and it's way more thorough than the drives built in smart scans, or even the manufacturer tools that they release for public use. Badblocks is another linux alternative, but it is more of a single purpose tool. Read here for a discussion on drive testing and validation. Link to comment
Frank1940 Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 I have something like a preclear box system running. That is not a problem. My question was more directed to the topic if the preclear script is a suitable solution for what inwant to do or if there is a better solution out there in the linux world. I am assuming that you are trying to verify if the drive is actually defective or did some other glitch occur which makes the drive 'look' bad. The big advantage to the Preclear script is that it tests every sector on the drive by writing and reading from each one. When it i s done, you will have the information to determine if the drive is completely bad, flakey or good to use again. The big disadvantage is that it takes a long time. If you are looking for a more rigorous testing protocol there is another script that will do that. But it takes even longer to run. (I can't remember the name of it or I would have looked for a link to it.) (Flakey drives often work great in Windows machine for data drives as you may never need to access that parts that are not reliable. unRAID, on the other hand, has to be able to read every sector on a drive to be able to rebuild an other drive.) Link to comment
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