November 25, 20178 yr Hi all, I'm about to swap one of my older 3T drives on my array with a new 8T drives. I already have a separate 8T disk on my array as the parity disk so the new 8T disk will go in as replacement for the 3T disk. My question is about pre-clearing the new disk. Normally I pre-clear my new disks before I put them in but this is the first time I'm doing a disk swap. Do we still recommend to pre-clear the new disk in my situation or would the swap process take care of that for me during data reconstruction from my 3T disk?
November 25, 20178 yr Preclear does a very good test of the disk. First it prereads the entire disk, then it writes zeroes to the entire disk, then it reads and verifies that all of the sectors are full of zeroes. At the end the drive contains a "preclear signature" that unRAID interprets as an absolutely blank disk and does not attempt to clear it itself. When using a disk to swap with another disk, the preclear signature is entirely unnecessary and ignored. Does it still server a useful purpose? Yes. It tests the disk and lets you know if there are any signs of early failure.
November 25, 20178 yr Author Thanks SDD. Yes that makes sense. I think I'll stick with doing the usual pre-clear then.
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