I've read a few posts on users having drives come up unformatted when indeed they are (and from what I've read the better wording for that state is unmounted). The issue seems to be specific to 4.5.3.

 

I've been able to consistently duplicate this behavior as I've been swapping out a few smaller disks for larger ones.

 

My steps:

 

-add an additional drive on an additional sata port and run the preclear script on it.

 

-once the preclear finishes, stop the array and shutdown the server.

 

-hook the new drive up to the sata port that the old drive it is replacing is on.

 

-power up the server.

 

The server will come up with the array stopped and recognize that a disk needs to be rebuilt. That disk will show as orange whereas all my other disks will show as green. Upon checking rebuild and hitting start... the rebuild will begin, but some or all of the other disks will now say unformatted.

 

The rebuild will complete ok and once done, the other drives will then mount.

 

 

Anyway, just wanted to detail my findings as the unformatted issue only happens for my setup when I'm adding a new drive to the array, and that behavior has been consistent. I also experienced it once when adding an additional drive, not replacing one.

 

Syslog of 2 occasions when this has happened:

 

http://pastebin.com/ugcJnssS

 

http://pastebin.com/Disg7Tad

 

I'm making the assumption this seems to be happening specifically with 4.5.3 though I'm fairly new to unraid and have only run 4.5.1 and then upgraded to 4.5.3 but from what I've read on the forum from others that have had the issue it appears specific to 4.5.3. Just want to get as much documented if it could help get this issue sorted.

 

Other threads with similar issues:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5590.0

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5587.0

Be sure to send an email to Limetech about the issue you are seeing.  Point him to this thread if you like.

Thank you for documenting this.  I was not able to reproduce initially.  I'm out of town until Wed. Mar. 17 & will be able to work on this then.

I'm not sure if its the same thing, but this seems to have happened to me with just replacing smaller drived with a larger ones.

I'm not sure if its the same thing, but this seems to have happened to me with just replacing smaller drived with a larger ones.

It is the same issue.  To me it is a timing issue... If your disks mount quickly, you'll never see "unformatted"

However, it is a usability issue.  They should NEVER say "unformatted" if they did not mount, or if they have a foreign file-system.  They should only say "unformatted" if their file-system was not present.  Very Very different.

 

Joe L.

I went from 4.5 to 4.5.3 yesterday, and did a clean parity check.  I then upgraded my parity disk from a WD 1TB Black to a Samsung 2TB 5400rpm.  Once I started the array all the disks except cache said unformatted and it began the parity check.  After a short while I realized I couldn't see any of my files in explorer, and we want to watch a movie tonight.  I knew all the data was still on there, so I stopped the parity check, and then restarted it.  All the disks came up, and now we can watch tonight while it rebuilds.

i find if you rush things refreshing the page faster than your disks mounting process you see unformatted, so just take your time