Preclear plugin


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Installed Preclear Plugin this weekend and really like it. Much easier (and safer) to use than the command line version.

 

While preclearing a Seagate 3TB NAS drive, I noted that the Start Preclear popup incorrectly displays the drive information (see attachment), where the serial number shows up in the Device Model field, the firmware version in the Serial Number field, and the size in the Firmware Version field. Firefox 44.0.2 is the browser.

StartPreclearPopup.png.da720e1dbf85546507206a966e735ac4.png

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will their be any plans to support -d to allow for USB connected devices to be precleared? Just wondering as I noticed it was failing and then realized I needed to pass a '-d sat' for my USB device to work. I know this would be tricky as depending on the device there are a lot of different commands to pass, but again just an idea as its the only way i know of to preclear an external drive before openning it and essentially voiding warranty.

 

https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/Supported_USB-Devices - this site has all the supported devices and the -d command it needs...

 

Maybe something as simple as a popup drop down that has the link to the website and allows the user to enter that part of the command?

 

I just hit this issue too - is there any chance of getting support in the popup before clearing to add custom flags for the script?

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I had a preclear going (3 passes), it was 3 days in, and I had a UPS event and everything shut down.  When everything came back up, there was no record that I can see to just resume the preclear.  Are there logs somewhere?  I do see "/boot/preclear_reports", but it only has my initial preclears from months ago.

 

If I'm starting over again, is 3 passes excessive, having likely made it to the 3rd pass already?  Or would 1 pass be pointless, since maybe it wouldn't know of any reassigned sectors from the intital pre clear.

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I had a preclear going (3 passes), it was 3 days in, and I had a UPS event and everything shut down.  When everything came back up, there was no record that I can see to just resume the preclear.  Are there logs somewhere?  I do see "/boot/preclear_reports", but it only has my initial preclears from months ago.

 

If I'm starting over again, is 3 passes excessive, having likely made it to the 3rd pass already?  Or would 1 pass be pointless, since maybe it wouldn't know of any reassigned sectors from the intital pre clear.

 

I had this happen to me with 2 disks running simultaneous pre clears. Each disk was through cycle 2 of 3 when the power outage happened. There was no UPS. You are the 2nd reported case AFAIK.

 

As a result of the outage I was unlucky enough to have S.M.A.R.T errors on both disks for S.M.A.R.T attribute: 187 Reported incorrect

 

This attribute value increased and was something that will forever be recorded in the S.M.A.R.T attributes which will never go away. Thankfully I can now "acknowledge" them in unRAID so that I don't receive notifications for them constantly.

 

Anyway, to your issue. A summary of what I was advised is recorded from the follows post within the Seagate 8TB thread onwards:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=36749.msg364268#msg364268

 

In short I just run another 3 cycles again. I don't like to skimp on disk preparation. It holds all my data after sensitive data after all. All worked out well and the two disks have been in service ever since with no other issues at all. Indeed I also run a S.M.A.R.T short test (before the pre clears) then the 3 pre clear cycles then a S.M.A.R.T long (extended) test post pre clears as this (if nothing else) puts a nice entry into the S.M.A.R.T report log with a timestamp that all is good (good advice from WeeboTech).

 

Have a read. Good Luck!

 

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Installed Preclear Plugin this weekend and really like it. Much easier (and safer) to use than the command line version.

 

While preclearing a Seagate 3TB NAS drive, I noted that the Start Preclear popup incorrectly displays the drive information (see attachment), where the serial number shows up in the Device Model field, the firmware version in the Serial Number field, and the size in the Firmware Version field. Firefox 44.0.2 is the browser.

 

I'll investigate this. Thanks for reporting.

 

 

will their be any plans to support -d to allow for USB connected devices to be precleared? Just wondering as I noticed it was failing and then realized I needed to pass a '-d sat' for my USB device to work. I know this would be tricky as depending on the device there are a lot of different commands to pass, but again just an idea as its the only way i know of to preclear an external drive before openning it and essentially voiding warranty.

 

https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/Supported_USB-Devices - this site has all the supported devices and the -d command it needs...

 

Maybe something as simple as a popup drop down that has the link to the website and allows the user to enter that part of the command?

 

I just hit this issue too - is there any chance of getting support in the popup before clearing to add custom flags for the script?

 

Is it better a select box or a text box?

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I had a preclear going (3 passes), it was 3 days in, and I had a UPS event and everything shut down.  When everything came back up, there was no record that I can see to just resume the preclear.  Are there logs somewhere?  I do see "/boot/preclear_reports", but it only has my initial preclears from months ago.

 

I can't remember for sure, but I thought that interim results were saved to the flash drive, somewhere.  If not, perhaps gfjardim can intercept them at the end of each pass, and copy them to the flash drive.  Seems like the initial SMART reports and all interim reports *should* be available on the flash drive, no matter what interruptions happen.

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will their be any plans to support -d to allow for USB connected devices to be precleared? Just wondering as I noticed it was failing and then realized I needed to pass a '-d sat' for my USB device to work. I know this would be tricky as depending on the device there are a lot of different commands to pass, but again just an idea as its the only way i know of to preclear an external drive before openning it and essentially voiding warranty.

 

https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/Supported_USB-Devices - this site has all the supported devices and the -d command it needs...

 

Maybe something as simple as a popup drop down that has the link to the website and allows the user to enter that part of the command?

 

I just hit this issue too - is there any chance of getting support in the popup before clearing to add custom flags for the script?

 

Is it better a select box or a text box?

 

A dropdown of all the different modules from the linked webpage may be one way to do it, however a free-form field to add an custom flags to the pre-clear script might be another (with a suitable warning) as a dropdown with all of the modules may be too overwhelming and looking through the list it doesn't actually reveal which option is the correct one in most cases.

 

Additionally, a free-form field allows for any flags to be given manually to the script - saving the pop-up from becoming too unwieldy with lots of options that probably remain at "default".

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What does everyone think about cleaning up the installation of this whole thing by having the plugin install the script?

 

I am well aware of the objections originally raised when Simplefeatures tried to introduce a preclear plugin but it's not clear they still apply. Joe L. isn't doing any support lately, and there are actually 3 versions of the script out now. I assume the bjp999 faster preclear is derivative of Joe L.'s original script, and gfjardim has posted what I assume is a derivative of bjp999's script that adds notifications.

 

Rather than being a support issue for Joe L., which was his originally stated concern, this plugin has turned into a support issue for the rest of the community and most of that could be cured by having the plugin install gfjardim's version of the script posted in reply #200 of this thread.

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What does everyone think about cleaning up the installation of this whole thing by having the plugin install the script?

 

+3

 

Also it should check for disk.cfg and warn to create one for new servers without any array assignments, fastest way is click new config.

 

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Boy, this preclear stuff is sure user-unfriendly to those of us who are trying to build their first unRAID system from scratch. All the so-called "help" I've seen assumes you're already an expert unRAID user. There's nothing for the complete n00b who wants to start off on the right foot. I've followed the first post as best I can, done everything right, and still I don't see what's shown in the first two seconds of the demo video in post #1!

 

I'm about to convince myself preclear is a big fat waste of time, anyway. Otherwise, it would be included in the guides and in the unRAID distro from the start, wouldn't it?

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I agree its not easy to set it up, I raised that with one of the mods as I was having trouble with it as well. I think they are going to tidy up the thread and make it easier for people to set it up. I would disagree with your conclusion that its a waste of time, its a very good idea to pre clear a drive before putting in your array, otherwise you are dealing with more problems if you don't and the drive fails, but really that's up to you. Personally I'd rather know before hand if a drive is bad and send it back before spending hours dealing with it failing in my array and all that that entails.

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My conclusion isn't that it's a waste of time -- yet! The whole reason I'm fighting to get set up so I can do preclears on all my brand-new drives is exactly because I agree that it's a very good idea to deal with as many problems as possible before putting any data on them. But the longer I stumble around trying to follow a thin trail of breadcrumbs to try to get the damn thing working, the closer I am to rage-quitting in frustration!

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I'm about to convince myself preclear is a big fat waste of time, anyway. Otherwise, it would be included in the guides and in the unRAID distro from the start, wouldn't it?
If you are setting up an array from scratch, then 95% of the time it is a waste of time. Do you feel lucky? There are other ways to test drives to weed out a bad drive before you trust it, so if you use the drive manufacturers utility and do at least 1 full surface scan, then don't bother with preclear.

 

However, after you have a running array, and want to add a new drive slot, then preclear is a huge time saver. If you don't preclear, unraid will be offline for many hours while it clears the drive to make it match parity.

 

If you are sure your new drives are good, and keep good backups of your data in case you are wrong about the drives being good, then yes, testing drives before using them is a waste of time in most cases.

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I don't want to be convinced preclearing disks is a waste of time. I want some clear instructions on how to preclear disks.

 

Why would you post in a preclearing thread, trying to convince me that preclearing is a waste of time? I see the point of your argument, but I've waited weeks to buy hardware and get ready to migrate to unRAID, so I don't care if it takes another week or so to preclear drives.

 

Now, because the initial instructions sucked, it seems I've formatted the drive I want to preclear. How do I remove the drive from the array, "unformat" it, and start a preclear on it?

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I don't want to be convinced preclearing disks is a waste of time. I want some clear instructions on how to preclear disks.

 

Why would you post in a preclearing thread, trying to convince me that preclearing is a waste of time? I see the point of your argument, but I've waited weeks to buy hardware and get ready to migrate to unRAID, so I don't care if it takes another week or so to preclear drives.

 

Now, because the initial instructions sucked, it seems I've formatted the drive I want to preclear. How do I remove the drive from the array, "unformat" it, and start a preclear on it?

I'm not trying to convince you that preclearing is a waste of time, I'm trying to paint a clearer picture of what it is and does. In a new array, it's simply a method (a good one) of testing drives, but that wasn't what the preclear script was written for, it's just a side effect.

 

To remove a drive from the array, go to tools and set a "New Config"

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Boy, this preclear stuff is sure user-unfriendly to those of us who are trying to build their first unRAID system from scratch. All the so-called "help" I've seen assumes you're already an expert unRAID user. There's nothing for the complete n00b who wants to start off on the right foot. I've followed the first post as best I can, done everything right, and still I don't see what's shown in the first two seconds of the demo video in post #1!

 

I'm about to convince myself preclear is a big fat waste of time, anyway. Otherwise, it would be included in the guides and in the unRAID distro from the start, wouldn't it?

So, what are you having problems with?

What are you seeing? Screenshots would help to illustrate.

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OK, here's what I've done, and where I'm at (spoiler alert: I think I've just about solved my problems):

 

- put unRAID 6.1.8 on an approved USB stick (32 GB SanDisk UltraFit USB 3.0)

- installed a Seagate 8TB shingled drive

- fired up unRAID for the first time

- identified 8TB drive as Drive 1, chose btrfs as file system (but did not format)

- per Joe L.'s preclear plugin post, put preclear plugin in root (I still don't know how to do this without pulling the USB drive and moving it to a Windows machine)

- per gfjardim's instructions in the first post, put script where it belongs (figured out how to do this with the Install Plugin dialog)

- tried to preclear; got a "no unassigned disks" message

- re-read instructions; saw that Joe L.'s plugin ALSO has to go in the gfjardim plugin directory

- went to preclear plugin, saw that version info was now green and 1.15, but still got "no unassigned disks" message

- somewhere in here, noticed that the info for the preclear plugin ("This plugin is a parser for Joe L. excelent Preclear Disk Script") has a spelling mistake

- thinking maybe I hadn't gone far enough to "activate" the disk to allow the preclear plugin to see it (grabbing at straws), started the array and formatted the disk

- when that last step didn't work, asked how to reverse the process

- got a very quick answer (thanks, jonathanm) did the "New Config" thing

- went to preclear plugin, and now it looks like the drive is ID'ed and ready to preclear

 

I guess my only question now, before I hit 'Start Preclear', is whether I've got the most up-to-date version of all the parts required for preclearing. I'm assuming that if the first post of this thread was last updated just last month, that version 1.15 of Joe L.'s 'preclear_disk.sh' is current?

 

If not, what's the latest? Can I install it without sneakernetting my USB stick over to my Windows PC yet again? If so, how?

 

I certainly appreciate the super-fast response time on this forum -- you're definitely confirming that unRAID is a better choice than the one-man support system I've been enduring with DriveBender on my existing WHS 2011 installation!

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Since you don't have a working unRaid server yet, the Joe L version should work just fine for you. There's another version buried in this thread somewhere that supports notifications and has been adjusted to run a little faster. Maybe someone has the link handy, but IMO you probably don't need it right now.

 

Just FYI, the reason you couldn't get this to work initially is because you didn't have a disk configuration file since you hadn't actually configured your array yet. The script can't be run on disks which are part of the array, so it checks that file to be sure you aren't trying to preclear an array disk. Remember, this script was originally intended to run preclears on disk being added to a working array. You fixed that problem when you added and then removed a disk.

 

As far as moving files to the flash drive, I have mine set as a SMB share. That way I can mount it remotely from anywhere in my LAN. Just an idea.

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