I’m a newbie and i’m trying unRAID 6.1.9 with 1 WD red 4TB for parity and 1 WD red 4 TB for data.

I put the disks in my system directly and booted unRAID from my USB drive.

All works perfectly but i didn’t do any preclear on the 2 disks.

I have to do it or is no longer needed?

 

Thanx in advance!

 

Zippi.

Personally here is what I would do:

1. If you are just testing unRAID and not putting any important data on there then I would just leave it as is.

2. If those are new drives and you like unRAID (which i know you will) then i would finish up testing whatever you want to test and then do a pre clear and then start using it full time.

3. If those are older or used drives of yours and they have good time on them, then I would just leave them.

 

So it's definitely not needed but if you want to do it then there wouldn't be any problems with that. Just make sure you have good cooling for your system while doing pre clears and parity checks.

It is never mandatory to do a pre-clear on any disk. If you don't unRAID takes the necessary steps for you. But most people do pre-clear their disks before using them, for two reasons. Firstly, it writes zeroes to every location on the disk which allows the disk to be inserted into an unRAID array without invalidating the parity. If you don't pre-clear then unRAID clears the disk itself before adding it to the array, a process which takes a long time. Secondly, pre-clearing a disk is a good way to test it before committing your data to it. There are other test routines you could run instead, but one or more cycles of pre-clear is a convenient and a tried and trusted method.

Thanx to all for the quick reply, i'll continue to test unRAID for a few days then i'll see what to do especially because i'll add other disks.

 

Thanx a lot !