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how to format drives

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Hi,

I want to re-do my entire unRaid Sever from scratch, I tried deleting config files, then I deleted everything in the flash drive and copied fresh unraid files to the flash, rebooted and unRaid still see's my shares and data folders. I want to start brand new fresh, short of booting a win9x cd or usb with format utility how can this be done?

 

Thanks.

Hi,

I want to re-do my entire unRaid Sever from scratch, I tried deleting config files, then I deleted everything in the flash drive and copied fresh unraid files to the flash, rebooted and unRaid still see's my shares and data folders. I want to start brand new fresh, short of booting a win9x cd or usb with format utility how can this be done?

 

Thanks.

Do not assign the drives... at least not until you download and run the preclear_disk.sh utility on them.  It will re-format them and wipe away all your old files.

 

(Be sure you want to do this, as there is no un-do to writing zeros to your entire disks)

 

Joe L.

  • Author

thanks,

unraid is going to force me to learn linux yet, unfortunately I do not want to... anyways,

 

searched forum, found the file, copied to flash drive, telnet to unraid, type the command listed about 80 times in 80 different ways, tried to change directories.. no success there... nothing, it cannot find it... blood pressure gets to high every time I try to anything with this beyond the basic install...  guess I will just grab a trusty windows disk and format the drives, then try unRaid again.

 

 

 

thanks,

unraid is going to force me to learn linux yet, unfortunately I do not want to... anyways,

 

searched forum, found the file, copied to flash drive, telnet to unraid, type the command listed about 80 times in 80 different ways, tried to change directories.. no success there... nothing, it cannot find it... blood pressure gets to high every time I try to anything with this beyond the basic install...  guess I will just grab a trusty windows disk and format the drives, then try unRaid again.

 

 

 

Assuming you unzipped the file to your flash drive.  It will be found at /boot

since the flash drive is mounted at /boot

 

So... Log in as "root"

Press the "enter" key at the password prompt, if it prompts you for one

 

Logged in as root, you are at the "home" directory of the "root" user.  You are correct, there are only a few files there. and not of them the one you unzipped to the flash drive.

 

You want to change directory to the flash drive by typing

cd /boot

 

Then, once there, you can type

ls

and you should see the preclear_disk.sh command.

 

Now, to see your disks "device" names you can look at the drop-down listing on the management console... The three-letter designations in the parens are the device names.  They will be sda,sdb,sdc, etc... if SATA drives, and hda, hdb, hdc, etc... if PATA drives.

 

If you want to clear the "sdb" device, type

preclear_disk.sh /dev/sdb

 

It will prompt you to be absolutely certain the disk is the one you wish to clear, answer "Yes" (with a capital "Y" and lower case "es")

It will take some number of hours to completely clear the drive...  In the interim, if you have questions, just ask... no need to get your blood pressure up... It is no problem to assist answering your questions.

 

Joe L.

  • Author

Thanks Joe,

 

Already formated all drives with a windows cd, but I am keeping a collection of unRaid tips and how to's in a text file in case I run across a simular issue later.

 

Tom

Thanks Joe,

 

Already formated all drives with a windows cd, but I am keeping a collection of unRaid tips and how to's in a text file in case I run across a simular issue later.

 

Tom

You will still want to use the preclear_disk.sh script on all of your drives before assigning them to your server.  Two reasons, one to minimize downtime, as once you assign a parity drive unRAID will perform a clear operation on any new drive you assign to the array, but it does it with the array off-line.  Try telling your family member the array is down for the next 4 to 6 hours when they want to watch a movie.  The pre-clear script allows you to add a drive with a down-time of only minutes.

 

The second reason for the pre-clear script is even more important.  It is to weed out and bad disks.  The pre-clear script is specifically designed to put a disk through a tough series of read and write operations to allow its built in SMART firmware to re-allocate any bad sectors BEFORE you start using the disk to store your data.

 

In any case, good luck with your server... linux is not that difficult, but it is different than MS-DOS. 

 

The wiki has a lot of tips, already collected for you:

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Console

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ#unRAID_Console_and_Addon_Questions

 

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