Tim Timmens Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 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! Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 I'd abort it -- it's likely a faulty disk, or something went awry in the system during the process. Check the SMART report for the disk after you regain control. Quote Link to comment
Tim Timmens Posted August 13, 2015 Author Share Posted August 13, 2015 How do I abort it? And is the smart report on the USB? Quote Link to comment
Tim Timmens Posted August 13, 2015 Author Share Posted August 13, 2015 OKay, aborted the pre-clear with controlC. Obtained smart report. I have attached it, is this HDD faulty? Thanks smart_report.txt Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 The SMART report looks fine. Something must have "hiccupped" during the pre-clear. Try it again Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 The SMART report looks fine. Something must have "hiccupped" during the pre-clear. Try it again Check connections. What is your power supply? Quote Link to comment
Tim Timmens Posted August 13, 2015 Author Share Posted August 13, 2015 It's a 750W power supply. I'll take it out and check the cable and re-do the pre-clear. Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 It's a 750W power supply. Single Rail? Quote Link to comment
Tim Timmens Posted August 13, 2015 Author Share Posted August 13, 2015 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. Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 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. Yes it is. A recent incident that shows why it matters. Quote Link to comment
BobPhoenix Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 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. Quote Link to comment
Tim Timmens Posted August 13, 2015 Author Share Posted August 13, 2015 So I need a new power supply? :'( Quote Link to comment
BobPhoenix Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 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. Quote Link to comment
Tim Timmens Posted August 13, 2015 Author Share Posted August 13, 2015 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 Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 Yes, that's the right set of steps. Since the S.M.A.R.T. report looks fine, it's very likely the pre-clear will finish just fine. If not, we'll have to consider other possibilities. Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 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. Quote Link to comment
Tim Timmens Posted August 18, 2015 Author Share Posted August 18, 2015 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 Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted August 18, 2015 Share Posted August 18, 2015 Most likely the disk needs to be replaced => if it was having an issue with a particular SATA port it wouldn't be dependent on what part of the disk was being accessed, which seems to be the case here. Quote Link to comment
Tim Timmens Posted September 4, 2015 Author Share Posted September 4, 2015 I have replaced the disk with a new WD Red 3tb disk. Still the same issue. 30 hours into a pre-clear and only on stage 2. Any ideas? Thanks Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted September 4, 2015 Share Posted September 4, 2015 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. Quote Link to comment
Hoopster Posted September 4, 2015 Share Posted September 4, 2015 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. Quote Link to comment
Tim Timmens Posted September 5, 2015 Author Share Posted September 5, 2015 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. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 You might try connecting a dedicated display => it seems strange, but the lack of a video interrupt could in fact somehow be causing issues with other interrupts ... and result in the disk accesses reverting to PIO instead of DMA => which would explain the dramatic drop in speed !! Quote Link to comment
Hoopster Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 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 Quote Link to comment
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