2 minutes ago, killeriq said:

Is there any specific reason why is not updated to latest Unraid release?

 

No, you are encouraged to upgrade your version of unRAID.

 

3 minutes ago, killeriq said:

as it seems like many users are using it or would like to...

 

I am assuming that you are talking about the preclear plugin.  That is a hit and miss proposition.  I strongly suspect that preclear plugin interacts in some manner with a few other plugins (or, maybe even, Dockers).  (At this point with an apparent lack of support for the preclear plugin, no other plugin developer is going to address any problem of interaction from one side of the problem!)   If you are not using one of these plugins, everything may work fine, you are one of the lucky ones, and you are home free.  If you have any problems after the OS upgrade, your first action should be to uninstall preclear and reboot. 

48 minutes ago, killeriq said:

Is there any specific reason why is not updated to latest Unraid release?

The developer of the plugin has not kept it up to date, AFAIK.  Remember, plugins and dockers are not necessarily products of Lime Technology, and their continued development and support is unfortunately not guaranteed.

 

I only ever used it to preclear disks before adding them to the array.  Once it was pointed out that unRaid can clear a drive without stopping the array I was fine.  If people want to stress-test a drive, there are still ways.

Just a heads up gfjardim (the plugin creator) appears to have updated the preclear plugin for 6.5.0 compatibility. 

 

It's available at:

 

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gfjardim/unRAID-plugins/master/plugins/preclear.disk.plg

15 minutes ago, sureguy said:

Just a heads up gfjardim (the plugin creator) appears to have updated the preclear plugin for 6.5.0 compatibility. 

 

It's available at:

 

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gfjardim/unRAID-plugins/master/plugins/preclear.disk.plg

 

It would appear that he is back to working on it.  This is the first few lines from the link above:

 

<?xml version='1.0' standalone='yes'?>

<!DOCTYPE PLUGIN [
<!ENTITY name      "preclear.disk">
<!ENTITY repo      "unRAID-plugins">
<!ENTITY author    "gfjardim">
<!ENTITY version   "2018.03.29">
<!ENTITY launch    "Tools/Preclear">
<!ENTITY gitURL    "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/&author;/&repo;/master">
<!ENTITY pluginURL "&gitURL;/plugins/&name;.plg">
]>

<PLUGIN name="&name;" author="&author;" launch="&launch;" version="&version;" pluginURL="&pluginURL;">

<CHANGES>
##&name;

###2018.03.29
- Fix: early unRAID 6.5 compatibility

 

Thanks, @gfjardim, for your time and effort in writing and maintaining this plugin.  It is so good to see that you haven't abandoned  this plugin.  I, for one, feel that preclearing a disk (While it does not often find a bad one) is a step that can prevent headaches a few days down the road when either (1) a disk that should have never been  put into service in the first pl;ace starts throwing errors or (2) a disk fails from the infant mortality phenomenon. 

21 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

Thanks, @gfjardim, for your time and effort in writing and maintaining this plugin.  It is so good to see that you haven't abandoned  this plugin.  I, for one, feel that preclearing a disk (While it does not often find a bad one) is a step that can prevent headaches a few days down the road when either (1) a disk that should have never been  put into service in the first pl;ace starts throwing errors or (2) a disk fails from the infant mortality phenomenon. 

 

Seconded!  Looks like the update is also available via native GUI plugin update which is very welcome.

Edited March 29, 20188 yr by dabl

AwesomeTHANK YOU @gfjardim so much!

 

Very kind regards,

craigr 

 

Edited March 29, 20188 yr by craigr

Marked the plugin as being compatible with 6.5.0  It's back in the Apps Tab.  Won't mark it as compatible with 6.5.1rc1+ until I verify the gcc version

 

Edited March 29, 20188 yr by pluginCop

6 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

 

Thanks, @gfjardim, for your time and effort in writing and maintaining this plugin.  It is so good to see that you haven't abandoned  this plugin.  I, for one, feel that preclearing a disk (While it does not often find a bad one) is a step that can prevent headaches a few days down the road when either (1) a disk that should have never been  put into service in the first pl;ace starts throwing errors or (2) a disk fails from the infant mortality phenomenon. 

 

 

Sorry for the delay, guys. I'm very short on time so I had to decrease the level of support dedicated to this plugin. If someone could verify if the script is working fine with v6.5 I do appreciate that.

1 minute ago, gfjardim said:

Sorry for the delay, guys. I'm very short on time so I had to decrease the level of support dedicated to this plugin. If someone could verify if the script is working fine with v6.5 I do appreciate that.

 

 

That's OK.  So glad you are back.  I have already started with ver6.5.1-rc2.  I am now 5+ hours into a 3TB drive.  Will report back when done.

59 minutes ago, gfjardim said:

 

 

Sorry for the delay, guys. I'm very short on time so I had to decrease the level of support dedicated to this plugin. If someone could verify if the script is working fine with v6.5 I do appreciate that.

It ran fine on a known bad 2TB drive and failed when it hit errors.  It seems to be working correctly.

 

I’m running it again on same drive, but can slap in a good 100GB drive once it’s finished.

 

craigr

Edited March 29, 20188 yr by craigr

6 hours ago, gfjardim said:

 

 

Sorry for the delay, guys. I'm very short on time so I had to decrease the level of support dedicated to this plugin. If someone could verify if the script is working fine with v6.5 I do appreciate that.

 

 

I'll be running this on 3x 12TB drives later this week. I will report back if there's any issues.

Edited March 30, 20188 yr by tyrindor

Currently running this on four HGST 6TB drives and on step 2 zeroing, all four indicated a UDMA CRC error count with a count of 1.  

5 minutes ago, luisv said:

Currently running this on four HGST 6TB drives and on step 2 zeroing, all four indicated a UDMA CRC error count with a count of 1.  

Probably a SATA cable issue, or even low on power.

 

craigr

13 minutes ago, craigr said:

Probably a SATA cable issue, or even low on power.

 

craigr

 

Hmm... new cables and new 650w PSU.  Safe to assume, nothing to worry about at this point of time?

5 minutes ago, luisv said:

Safe to assume, nothing to worry about at this point of time?

Single error is not a problem, but since it happen on all disks you might get more, and that would mean there's trouble, I would say 4 bad SATA cables it's not likely, so maybe controller or if they share some kind of enclosure.

17 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

 

 

That's OK.  So glad you are back.  I have already started with ver6.5.1-rc2.  I am now 5+ hours into a 3TB drive.  Will report back when done.

 

Results of that preclear test with your new version.  NOTE:  the End-to-End and the CRC Errors have exist for quite some time now and were the product of a bad SATA expansion card.  This disk is now one that I currently use just for test purposes and has probably been through ten preclear cycles in the past couple of years.  I might use it in an array in a real bind but with crossed fingers!

New Text Document.pdf

Edited March 30, 20188 yr by Frank1940

3 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

Single error is not a problem, but since it happen on all disks you might get more, and that would mean there's trouble, I would say 4 bad SATA cables it's not likely, so maybe controller or if they share some kind of enclosure.

 

Everything being used in this second smaller system is brand new, no drive enclosure, no additional controller card, using the built-in controller of the Asrock Z370M-ITX Motherboard.   

 

1 minute ago, luisv said:

Everything being used in this second smaller system is brand new, no drive enclosure, no additional controller card, using the built-in controller of the Asrock Z370M-ITX Motherboard. 

The fact that's it's new doesn't mean there isn't a problem, but wait, as long as you don't get more you're OK.

Just now, johnnie.black said:

The fact that's it's new doesn't mean there isn't a problem, but wait, as long as you don't get more you're OK.

 

No sure totally understandable.  Just wanted to indicate that parts weren't repurposed.  

30 minutes ago, luisv said:

 

No sure totally understandable.  Just wanted to indicate that parts weren't repurposed.  

 

As I understand it, the CRC error count is a count of errors that occur between when the SATA data is encoded on the hard drive and when it is later decoded (a few microseconds later) on the SATA port on either the MB of a SATA expansion card.  So it a basically an error that occurred in data transmission. 

 

It can be a simple random event. 

 

It can also be caused by tying all of the SATA cables together to make the inside of the case look 'neat'!  (Tying cables together can cross-talk between the cables if the cables are not shielded and 99%+ of all cables today are not!)   

 

It can be caused by a bad cable or loose connection.   (See here for an possible loose connection cause:   https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=10477   Please note that If WD made a design to their SATA connector that must have been some reason behind it and other manufacturers may have done the same thing and not posted about it.)  

 

It could be a bad SATA controller on the MB but that is a most unusual occurrence. 

 

EDIT:  A CRC error is not a fatal error in any sense of the word.  The data will simply be resent.  The only way it becomes a real problem is if a high percentage of the packets have errors.  That could impact performance.  It can also be a indicator of a potential fatal error in the future.  

Edited March 30, 20188 yr by Frank1940

I installed my first new drive into the array without using preclear and it went flawlessly! The new drive is a WD Datacenter Gold 12TB which replaced a WD Red 6TB. Here are the stats:

 

Event: unRAID Parity sync / Data rebuild

Subject: Notice [TOWER] - Parity sync / Data rebuild finished (0 errors)

Description: Duration: 1 day, 33 minutes, 16 seconds. Average speed: 135.8 MB/s

Importance: normal

 

Much faster to be fully up and running and have a protected array than it used to be. 

 

Good job!

 

18 hours ago, gfjardim said:

 

 

Sorry for the delay, guys. I'm very short on time so I had to decrease the level of support dedicated to this plugin. If someone could verify if the script is working fine with v6.5 I do appreciate that.

 

@gfjardim thank you!  Preclear is, to me, a critical component of sticking with Unraid

. 

May I buy you a beer or two?  (PayPal, bitcoin, etc?) 

6 minutes ago, dchamb said:

I installed my first new drive into the array without using preclear and it went flawlessly! The new drive is a WD Datacenter Gold 12TB which replaced a WD Red 6TB. Here are the stats:

 

Event: unRAID Parity sync / Data rebuild

Subject: Notice [TOWER] - Parity sync / Data rebuild finished (0 errors)

Description: Duration: 1 day, 33 minutes, 16 seconds. Average speed: 135.8 MB/s

Importance: normal

 

Much faster to be fully up and running and have a protected array than it used to be. 

 

Good job!

 

 

If you really want to make sure that everything is truly OK, you should run a second parity check (either correcting or non-correcting).   It should finish with zero errors.  

11 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

 

If you really want to make sure that everything is truly OK, you should run a second parity check (either correcting or non-correcting).   It should finish with zero errors.  

And an extended smart test. That way you are reading every sector after the clear operation has written every sector.

43 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

 

If you really want to make sure that everything is truly OK, you should run a second parity check (either correcting or non-correcting).   It should finish with zero errors.  

 

My monthly parity check is scheduled for tomorrow so I should know before the weekend is over. Thanks!