I am trying to conduct a single pass Preclear for a new 6TB drive. I can kick it off, but it will hang the system within 30 seconds of launch. There is a line of "underline" characters shown during the failure on the monitor. I have not been successful in capturing a log since the only way to recover is to do a unclean restart. The system restarts ok, but I can't preclear my disk.

 

When I launch Preclear, I do get the initial smartreport, but it dies shortly after and it takes unraid with it. I'm researching how to run "tail" to get some logged output for the next attempt.

 

I don't need to format the drive first, do I? I didn't do that first - perhaps that is it? It is a "fresh outta the bag" hard drive.

 

I attached 2 photos - it's all I have.  One shows the "underscores" on the monitor screen. The last shows the system locked up 26 seconds into the preclear cycle...it was stuck there when I returned 3-4 hours later.

 

Oh - to define "hang the system" . Hangs - as in - no more reports from the app, no more screen refreshes from the GUI - cessation of any streams currently running from the server, termination of web services. The only way I've found to recover is hold the power switch until it forces a shutdown and then restart using the power button.

 

I did remove the application and then added it back, but I have not tested it like that yet...we're using the server so, I will do that when nobody is watching.

Here is the pic I took of the preclear started right after the parity check from a previous failure completed. There is another parity check going on right now.

 

My apologies...I should have posted these in Plugin support for Preclear. Not thinking.

 

I ended up creating a new temporary server using an old computer I had. After installing Community Applications, Unassigned Drives and Preclear on unraid 6.1.9, I used that to preclear my drive.  I precleared (well, will be done in a few hours) my new drive and I will expand one of my disks in my permanent array with that.

 

Seems like it might be a GREAT time to contemplate a motherboard upgrade . I may upgrade the OS to 6.2.4 on the temporary machine and see if I can still preclear or if that induces the error I get on my permanent array. It appears that I may have a problem with my hardware (It is a very old Zotac Motherboard and uses a "not well behaved" chipset, so it has served me well and it could be transplanted to another case).

 

I spotted a solid donor motherboard at my local Microcenter - 8 SATA ports and uses a CPU/Cooler I have on hand. Might be a solid upgrade for $40. I really want to wait and see if we can run a Ryzen/AM4 motherboard combo - if we can, that's what I would really like to upgrade to, but release of that is likely to be 3-6 months out.

 

Thanks for everyone who responded - especially to gfjardim.