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Pre-Clear Issue


Tim Timmens

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I am currently using pre-clear tool on a new disk. It's on the final post read part but it's taking ages. Normally a 3TB disk is done in just over 24 hour mark, currently the post read is taking absolute ages. It's been post reading for the last 10 hours at 2.6Mb/s and has completed just 2%. Overall the pre-clear has taken 34 hours and counting.

 

Could this be a faulty disk? Can I make this step quicker? By my calculations, at 2.6Mb/s will take months!

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It's a 750W power supply.

Single Rail?

 

I don't know if it's a single rail or not as I don't know what you mean. My power supply is a Corsair AX760.

He is asking about the +12volt power on the power supply.  Does it come from a single source or is it split up into multiple sources (rails).  It appears your power supply has a single 12volt rail (in description on Newegg:+12V Rails: Single): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139042

 

Assuming I found your powersupply anyway.

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So I need a new power supply?  :'(

I don't think so.  You want a single rail.  If you had multiple rails it would be bad!  Multiple rail power supplies usually earmark the other rails for graphics cards and reduce the power you can use for HDDs to a single rail that also is powering the MB and fans thus further reducing your power for HDDs.
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oh okay, brilliant.

 

So to fix my issues, I will disconnect the new HDD that I was pre-clearing. I will make sure all cables are connected good. Then I will try again with the new HDD. hopefully it should pre-clear in the normal 24ish hours it takes. If it's still slow, then I shall report back.

 

Thanks

 

 

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oh okay, brilliant.

 

So to fix my issues, I will disconnect the new HDD that I was pre-clearing. I will make sure all cables are connected good. Then I will try again with the new HDD. hopefully it should pre-clear in the normal 24ish hours it takes. If it's still slow, then I shall report back.

 

Thanks

 

To rule out possible disk controller issue, you might consider attaching the drive to a motherboard port if it is not already. I had issues in my much earlier days that I suspected were due to problems preclearing on non-motherboard ports, and even today strive to preclear using motherboard SATA ports.

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I still have some kind of problem. Began the preclear again and on disk pre-read stage, it was reading the disk around the 120MB/s. At 70% stage, it began to read at 2.3MB/s and has been at the speed since.

 

Should I try to connect the disk to motherboard port or is the disk in need of replacing?

 

Thanks

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  • 3 weeks later...

It's been a while since I pre-cleared a 3TB drive, but I believe they took ~ 35 hours or so.  After 30 hours you should certainly be in the post-read phase ... so something is clearly not right.

 

Have you replaced the SATA cable you were using for the drive?    Unless you've had the misfortune to get two defective drives in a row (seems very unlikely), you need to try (a) a different SATA cable (preferably one certified for SATA-III and definitely with locking connectors); and (b) using a different SATA port, just in case you're having an issue with one of your ports.

 

 

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I had similar issues about four years ago when first setting up my unraid system.  Preclears would start at 120-130 MB/s and then something would happen to drop it to 2.6 MB/s.  Drives were connected to SATA card and not motherboard ports so, I do not know if it would have been different on MB SATA ports, although I suspect I would not have had the problem on an MB port.

 

In my case, it was an IRQ problem.  Something happened to interrupt the IRQ which was assigned to the SATA card and I would get an instant speed drop on all drives connected to that card.  There would be IRQ related warnings in the syslog that corresponded to my speed drops.  I found out what was causing the IRQ interrupts (switching monitor ports between PC and unRAID).  I hooked up a dedicated monitor to the unRAID box and the problem went away.  Are there any IRQ related messages in your syslog around the time of the speed drop? 

 

The monitor issue is undoubtedly not your issue, but, many other things sometimes interrupts IRQs depending on your motherboard, BIOS and SATA hardware.

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It's funny, I saw something about IRQ come up but didn't think much of it as they would go away after a few minutes.

 

I have also recently changed monitors to a HDMI TV instead of a dedicated monitor.

 

I will have a look at the syslog and report back. I will also change the SATA cable, hopefully something works.

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Below is the link to the 5 pages of my attempts to troubleshoot this issue and the helpful replies I received.  In the end, it was switching the monitor input that disabled IRQ 16 and caused my preclear speeds to drop dramatically.  Maybe there is something in this discussion that will help you.  There are also a couple of recent threads on IRQ 16 getting disabled due to USB devices and the SATA card sharing IRQ 16.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=17823.0

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