I jumped on a 4tb hdd deal on Black Friday, but I'm having issues with preclearing it. I'm using the preclear plugin (which is awesome) and the standard preclear script. The process starts off fine and gets to about 30% of the first cycle, but then I get a hard lock up of the entire system. No ping, no webgui, nothing. I have to kill the power on the PSU. This has happened twice. Does it mean the hdd is bad? Thanks in advance.

I jumped on a 4tb hdd deal on Black Friday, but I'm having issues with preclearing it. I'm using the preclear plugin (which is awesome) and the standard preclear script. The process starts off fine and gets to about 30% of the first cycle, but then I get a hard lock up of the entire system. No ping, no webgui, nothing. I have to kill the power on the PSU. This has happened twice. Does it mean the hdd is bad? Thanks in advance.

According to your sig you only have 2GB RAM so it is probably running out. See the script thread starting here and continuing for a few posts after that. I think you can set those size parameters in the plugin.

You are correct, I only have 2gb in the server. I rebooted everything and started the pre-clear again with 64mb as the read and write size. It seems to be going slower, but that's no issue as long as it finishes. I'll report back as things move along. Thanks, as always.

There are some drive faults that will hang your server.  It's better not to start the array when you preclear, or at least don't write to it until it has finished a complete read cycle.

I got the same hard lockup again overnight. I had seen the first cycle of the preclear get to about 35%, but that's all. Is 64mb low enough for the read and write sizes? I've precleared 3tb drives on here, but that was with version 5.x.

 

Brucey7 - all of this is without the array started at all. The drive I'm preclearing is actually in the slot of my old parity drive. Once its cleared the plan was to make it parity and then either extend the array (I would need a card, all 6 slots on the mobo are full) or replace an old drive.

 

Thanks for the help.

It very much sounds like your drive is faulty and you will need to RMA it

Ok, RMA it is. At this point I'm happy to think that is the cause instead of something wrong with the system itself. Thanks for the assistance.

After getting the replacement from newegg I installed it and started the preclear at the normal settings, just to see. After less than 10 hours I got the same lock-up of the system. I restarted everything and set the preclear to much smaller size parameters. After 45+ hours of that I saw it get all the way to 95%. When I came back the next morning, the system was locked up again. At this point I'm leaning toward it being the system and not the drives. Thoughts? Ideas. Thanks.

...hard lock up of the entire system. No ping, no webgui, nothing...

Does "nothing" include the console? Do you have a monitor and keyboard attached?

I didn't check before I killed power to the box this time, but before when it has done the same thing, I saw nothing on the screen at all. If you think it would be worthwhile to confirm that, I can kick off another preclear with the normal settings and check the monitor when it does it again (assuming it will). Thanks.

Not sure it will be of any help, but I turned everything back on and pulled the diagnostics file. It is attached. Thanks in advance.

tower-diagnostics-20151223-1547.zip

I tried the preclear again (gluten for punishment) with the default settings again. This time I left the browser window open showing the progress. It got to the "zeroing" step this time and actually got to 4% of that. Once it hit there I got the same lock up again. Clicking anywhere in the webgui gives nothing, no telnet, no ping and the monitor connected shows nothing as well. I've killed the power to the box, but I can start it up again and pull diagnostics again if that would be of any use. Thanks in advance.

Is this the drive you're trying to preclear?

Device Model:     HGST HDN724040ALE640
Serial Number:    PK1338P4H5P73B

SMART looks OK. I don't have any personal experience running with only 2GB RAM but I wonder if that isn't the problem. Have you run a memtest lately?

 

If you have a monitor and keyboard attached, does it respond if you type anything? I was wondering if you could get a diagnostics from the command line after the "lockup". You would do this by entering "diagnostics" which will write the zip to the log folder on your flash.

Yes, that is the drive I'm trying to preclear. I've precleared drives up to 3tb on this system, but that's been several years ago. I ran memtest on the box in early november (I've been having and posting about issues for a bit) and it did 40+ hours then without any issues. Once the box freezes the monitor shows nothing at all for it when I switch over to that input on the monitor (it goes back to the other input, just like it does when the unraid box is complete powered down), so I don't think I would be able to get anything off of it. I know the box is old and I'm thinking about replacing it with newer stuff anyway, but I'm really hoping I can get this drive precleared and added to the system now. Thanks in advance.

Any other ideas or things to try? I'm just about at my end with things. Not sure what changed to start having issues. Thanks in advance.

I was running on a box with 4GB of ram and had the exact same lock ups at different points of the preclear on only 2TB drives. Was about to give up and decided to swap unRaid over to a different server (Asus M5A97 R2, FX4350, 8GB DDR3 G.Skill) and 14 hours later that same 2TB drive is done with the pre read, the zeroing and is about 1/4 through the post read process.

 

Only mentioned the machine specs meaning I swapped it over to a much more powerful machine rather than the AM1 machine that should have been more than enough for a unRAID media file server. So from my personal experience, unRAID may run fine as a file server on a low powered, low ram machine, it defiantly doesn't do well preclearing drives on a low power NAS.

 

Again, just my personal experience.

Just an update.... I've since upgraded my cpu/mobo/ram to what is listed in my signature now and the preclear runs without issue. The previous ram passed memtest no problem, so either the cpu/mobo was just old and tired (it was 5 years old, so I guess its possible) or there was an issue with not enough ram (but it precleared 3tb without issue). Either way, all is well now and I guess I was overdue for an upgrade anyway.