Should I Build my Array Now Before my SATA Controller Comes?

[SSD]

Composed this earlier but never sent. See post below for answer to latest question.

 

The preclear reports have no extension. You can add .txt because they are text files. The preclear pluggin just calls the original script behind the scenes. Can't imagine it deletes the output files. If you can't find them, in the unRaid GUI, if you click on the disk hyperlink, it will bring up some settings and underneath is the smart report output. You can screenshot those and post instead. The before not as important as the now!

 

BTW, every time you rebuild parity, you lose your protection. It should be a very infrequent event. UnRaid is prepared to add preclear disks (it will give informational messages before the array is started about new drives and whether they are seen as aleady cleared). My 6T parity was in place with one parity rebuild for close to 4 years (the one rebuild was a wholesale replacement of a bunch of older, smaller disks, and with a trick, there is a way to maintain protection even through that process.) I was periodically adding new drives as needed with no removals or rebuilds.

 

By the way, there is an option to auto start your array on boot. I would turn that off if you plan on leaving it run 24x7. I do that because when my server is rebooted, I want to make sure everything looks good before starting the array. If a drive is offline, this is the time to see it to avoid a need to rebuild. There are some recovery processes that absolutely require that the array not start on boot. They're are ways to manually edit config files, but better just to always give your array a quick human check before starting in the rare circumstances it goes down.