Preclear paused - How to continue?

[MacGeekPaul]

Hi All,

 

So just started my first unRAID build, added my first WD 3TB Red, downloaded the Preclear Disks plugin and started it off, the first Pre-read has completed after 7 hours, moved onto the Zeroing, and at 97% has just paused and I can't find anyway to unpause it and get it to continue.

 

When I look at the preview report it isn't showing any issues, and the server seems fully working?

 

Can anybody advise me please?

[Frank1940]

You might want to read the last few pages of the support thread for the preclear plugin.

I seem to recall that you are not the only one with this issue.

[MacGeekPaul]

26 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

You might want to read the last few pages of the support thread for the preclear plugin.

I seem to recall that you are not the only one with this issue.

 

Will do, thank you.

Edited July 23, 2017 by MacGeekPaul

[bcekli]

were you able to resolve this? I am having the same issue

[bcekli]

I am trying to read through as well cant seem to find paused area of the thread

[MacGeekPaul]

3 hours ago, bcekli said:

were you able to resolve this? I am having the same issue

 

No, I gave up in the end and just added them to start the array, I didn't bother with a preclear.

I decided to do this as my drives are a couple of years old and pulled from my Synology, so figured they were probably okay.

[shEiD]

Running preclear on the drives before adding them to the pool, makes adding them to the pool way faster - almost instant. If you have not precleared the drives, then when you add them to the pool - they get cleared then and it takes hours. Or am I wrong?

 

If you want to preclear faster (using the preclear plugin), you can disable pre and post reads, iirc.

 

Also, methinks it's a really good practice to run a preclear plugin on the drives before adding them to the pool. It tests the drives.

[MacGeekPaul]

From my reading beforehand, I agree with what you are saying about it being a better option.

 

In my case I was frustrated that I had wasted 16 hours doing the first drive, only to try again and possibly have the same result.

 

It looks like a few people are having some problems with preclearing according to the link that @Frank1940 posted, which made my mind up.

 

Time wise it took just a few minutes to format my 3TB drive before it was ready.

 

[JonathanM]

17 minutes ago, shEiD said:

Running preclear on the drives before adding them to the pool, makes adding them to the pool way faster - almost instant. If you have not precleared the drives, then when you add them to the pool - they get cleared then and it takes hours. Or am I wrong?

If the array has parity, then yes, a drive must be all zeroes to be added to the pool without recalculating parity. If there is no active parity, then adding the drive is the same either way.

 

Preclear allows you to zero AND TEST the drive before committing it to the parity protected array, if you add a drive normally the option to format and use the drive will be delayed until the array can clear it, to preserve parity. The built in clearing function only writes zeroes, it does no read testing to ensure those zeroes were correctly written, it relies on the drives error checking and reporting.

[MacGeekPaul]

Ahh okay, so as I haven't added my parity drives yet, my drives are just added as normal, but once all my copying is complete from my Synology, and I add a couple of parity drives, it will take a good while to calculate and create them, and any additional drives added after than will be automatically zeroed and tested prior to being added to the array unless I use the preclear plugin option?

[Frank1940]

It will be cleared NOT tested!  If you want to test the drive, you will have to install the preclear plugin. The preclear plugin will test and clear the drive so that when you do add it to the array, unRAID will recognize that it has been cleared and will proceed directly to formatting.  This takes a few minutes depending on the size of the disk being added but My 3TB drives usually take about two to three minutes and  the disks on online ready for use. 

Edited July 25, 2017 by Frank1940

[bcekli]

I maybe have it figured out mine happened after my drives had been clearing for about 8 hours. I wanted to start off on a good note.. being my first unraid server I was messing around and checking things out. During this time I changed the name of my server I thought maybe it was because of that although it did not make sense to me. Changed back no luck. I figured bite the bullet and stop preclear and start the process again. Interestingly this time it went right to pause!

 

Then I also remembered I had changed my time zone at the same time because it was wrong and remembering how preclear tracks the length of process I thought maybe this was it. I changed time back to see and no luck. Then some annoying tech report voice in my head said have you tried turning it off and on again 

 

I said to myself I wonder if a reboot is needed for time changes to take affect... While that was going on I was thinking to myself was that it? Could I have done that without wasting the previous 8 hours....

 

Looks like you cant? The paused process had canceled but it let me restart preclear. I am 6hrs in no pauses yet. Fingers crossed for the old reboot trick.

 

I deleted the thread I had started asking for help. I will let you guys know if finishes preclear on here or come crying for help if it pauses again.

[bcekli]

2 hours ago, MacGeekPaul said:

 

No, I gave up in the end and just added them to start the array, I didn't bother with a preclear.

I decided to do this as my drives are a couple of years old and pulled from my Synology, so figured they were probably okay.

By any chance you had changed time settings as well?

[mdrodge]

I get a similar issue.

Preclear is working but it go's for 5 seconds then pauses for 5 seconds and repeatedly does this. I'm going for 2 full cycles.

I'm 42 hours into doing 2x 14tb usb drives at the same time.

I'm still erasing in the first cycle. At this rate it'll be a 2 week process.

I will wait because I don't want to shuck them until I'm sure they will not fail but dam

Maybe it's a usb bottle neck for me but everything else on the system is fine.

 

I thought it might be an Unassigned devices bug????

Edited January 1, 2021 by mdrodge

[mdrodge]

Jan 01 22:14:35 preclear_disk_51474B4254555954_93420: Resumed

Jan 01 22:15:13 preclear_disk_51474B4254555954_93420: Pause (sync command issued)

Jan 01 22:15:13 preclear_disk_51474B4254555954_93420: Paused

Jan 01 22:16:03 preclear_disk_51474B4254555954_93420: Resumed

Jan 01 22:17:06 preclear_disk_51474B4254555954_93420: Pause (sync command issued)

Jan 01 22:17:06 preclear_disk_51474B4254555954_93420: Paused

Jan 01 22:18:48 preclear_disk_51474B4254555954_93420: Resumed

Jan 01 22:19:13 preclear_disk_51474B4254555954_93420: Pause (sync command issued)

Jan 01 22:19:13 preclear_disk_51474B4254555954_93420: Paused

 

[mdrodge]

I might have found the problem for me.

I run a script to fix permissions on files downloaded

 

#!/bin/bash
/usr/local/sbin/newperms /mnt/cache/Downloads                       

 

 with a custom schedule of * * * * *  aka the script runs once a minute.

Once i thought about the time stamps it made me think about this script.

 

Not sure how fixing permissions on the cache drive would cause this issue though.

 

still I'll just disable until I'm finished then do a full docker safe permission once it's all done.

Edited January 1, 2021 by mdrodge

[mdrodge]

o wait sync command seems to be part of that command. yep that's definitely it

it's going so much better now

unfortunately i need to run the command each time a file created but i'll settle for hourly and just clear out all the Emby Auto Organise errors later

Edited January 2, 2021 by mdrodge