The name is TEFjLONjDON, New Community user here!

 

First off let me start by saying I am a new Unraid user and it's great to be here. I played with unraid a few years ago and things have definitely changed a little bit.

It's great to be back. Also just to get this out of the way I did try searching for the answers to this question in the forum but found nothing in the Unraid 6 forum or any other place for that matter. I am sorry in advance if this has been covered in detail somewhere else and I'm sure it has.

 

Some background on my current situation:

Yesterday just to practice a bit and do some tests I installed the newest unraid 6 version on a new USB Flash Drive and set up a temporary array with cache and parity. I let it run all night while I did more research and developed a plan. (I'm going to have an instance of Home Assistant ie.. HASSIO running with plex other VM's) 

 

Now it's time to start from scratch because several of the disks I was using are bad and I'll need to swap them out with spares from another system. (! life on a budget !) 3 bad disks in total. (1 parity disk, and 2 array disks have allocation errors, get hot and fail smart test.) I will probably run pre-clear on each of them one at a time, when I find the time. I plan to use a spare sata port that I'll keep open for the job. But first I just need to get a more stable/ usable array up and running.

 

What I want to do is to delete everything; the array, the cache, and the parity information: so I can start clean with a new planned / array parity and cache setup? I don't care about any of the data on any of the disks! 

I don't necessarily want to erase the config, ie.. network settings or users. All of that stuff is fine, I'd like to keep the plugins I have already installed (I realize that beyond the plugins still being installed that I will still need to setup all the mappings again.

 

Is there a way to do this more easily without reinstalling everything?

 

From what I understand, running a preclear on each of the physical disks will make them invalid. But, the array would still try to rebuild it's self using the old parity information left over on the other array disks, even if I've already removed and unformatted the parity disks and cache disks. (Which, by the way, I already did this morning!)

 

Your assistance is most appreciated.

Kindest regards.

 

PS I'm happy to provide more info if needed just ask. PSS the specs for the system I'm working with are as follows.

 

Component	Selection	Price
CPU	Intel - Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor	$244.99
CPU Cooler	Corsair - H60 54.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler	$59.99
Thermal Compound	Arctic Silver - 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5g Thermal Paste	$6.49
Motherboard	ASRock - Fatal1ty Z87 Professional ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
	ASRock Fatal1ty Z87 Professional LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Gaming Motherboard	$199.99
Memory	Kingston - HyperX Fury Blue 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory	$79.99
	Kingston - HyperX Fury Blue 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory	$79.99
Storage	Samsung - 840 EVO 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$359.75
	Seagate - Constellation.2 250GB 2.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$53.53
	Seagate - Constellation.2 250GB 2.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$53.53
	Western Digital - RE4 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$50.99
	Western Digital - Mainstream 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$44.99
	Western Digital - 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card	PNY - GeForce GTX 1060 3GB 3GB Video Card	$345.41
Case	Rosewill - BLACKHAWK-ULTRA ATX Full Tower Case	$179.99
Power Supply	OCZ - Fatal1ty 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
	PC Power & Cooling Fatal1ty Gaming Series 750 Watt 80+ Bronze Semi-Modular Active PFC Performance Grade ATX PC Power Supply (OCZ750FTY)	$101.99
Optical Drive	Asus - DRW-24B3ST/BLK/G/AS DVD/CD Writer	$23.99
Operating System	Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit	$138.99
Software	Microsoft - Office Professional 2016 Software	$339.99
	Adobe - Photoshop & Premiere Elements 14 Software
Sound Card	Creative Labs - Audigy SE 24-bit 96 KHz Sound Card	$22.99
Wireless Network Adapter	Intel - 6235AN.HMWWB Half Mini-PCI-Express 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi Adapter
Case Fan	Cooler Master - Megaflow 110.0 CFM 200mm Fan	$11.49
	Cooler Master - Megaflow 110.0 CFM 200mm Fan	$11.49
	Rosewill - RCA-220-BL 110.0 CFM 220mm Fan	$14.99
	Rosewill - RCA-220-BL 110.0 CFM 220mm Fan	$14.99
	Corsair - Air Series SP120 62.7 CFM 120mm Fan	$20.43
	Corsair - Air Series SP120 62.7 CFM 120mm Fan	$20.43
Monitor	Samsung - S19B420M 18.5" 1366x768 Monitor	$262.48
Keyboard	Logitech - K120 Wired Standard Keyboard	$11.29
Mouse	Logitech - M310 Wireless Laser Mouse	$12.99
Speakers	Frisby FS-5010BT 5.1 Surround Sound Home Theater Speakers System with Bluetooth USB/SD and Remote	$109.95
Other	Syba 1 Port ATA133 IDE and 2 Port SATA II PCI Controller Card with Software RAID Component (SD-VIA-1A2S)	$16.42
	RIITOP 2 Ports USB 3.0 Female Back Panel to MB 20pin Header Connector Cable Adapter with PCI Slot Plate Bracket 1.5ft	$13.99
	QNINE PCIe 3 Ports 1394A Firewire Expansion Card, PCI Express (1X) to External IEEE 1394 Adapter Controller (2 x 6 Pin + 1 x 4 Pin) for Desktop PC and DV Connection	$23.99
Total:		$2,932.51

 

 

****************EDIT**************

 

I'm such a knob found the information here.

https://lime-technology.com/forums/topic/36669-delete-misconfigured-array-to-start-from-scratch/?do=findComment&comment=351807

 

in this topic:

https://lime-technology.com/forums/topic/36669-delete-misconfigured-array-to-start-from-scratch/ 

Edited March 27, 20188 yr by TEfjLONjDON
found answer.

Looks like you found your answer, but there are some other things in your post that I thought I would comment on.

 

HomeAssistant and Plex both have dockers. There is no need to setup VMs for these and many other things. You also mention plugins and mappings in the same breath. That sounds as if you don't understand the distinction between plugins and dockers. Have you installed Community Applications?

 

20 minutes ago, TEfjLONjDON said:

From what I understand, running a preclear on each of the physical disks will make them invalid. But, the array would still try to rebuild it's self using the old parity information left over on the other array disks, even if I've already removed and unformatted the parity disks and cache disks. (Which, by the way, I already did this morning!)

 

This suggests a very vague and perhaps dangerous (mis)understanding of how to work with the parity array. Please seek advice if you need to change anything about your configuration after you get it going, or if you have any other problems.

 

Here is the wiki on parity:

 

https://lime-technology.com/wiki/UnRAID_6/Overview#Parity-Protected_Array

1 hour ago, trurl said:

the distinction between plugins and dockers.

A lot of that is my fault, as I made the conscious decision to treat them as simply different delivery methods for an app.  That, and there is no longer any overlap in available apps between the two.

4 hours ago, trurl said:

Looks like you found your answer, but there are some other things in your post that I thought I would comment on.

 

HomeAssistant and Plex both have dockers. There is no need to setup VMs for these and many other things. You also mention plugins and mappings in the same breath. That sounds as if you don't understand the distinction between plugins and dockers. Have you installed Community Applications?

 

 

This suggests a very vague and perhaps dangerous (mis)understanding of how to work with the parity array. Please seek advice if you need to change anything about your configuration after you get it going, or if you have any other problems.

 

Here is the wiki on parity:

 

https://lime-technology.com/wiki/UnRAID_6/Overview#Parity-Protected_Array

Thank you for the quick reply here. This truly is a one of a kind community.

 

I can proudly say that as a new UnRaid user currently I do not possess a strong foundational knowledge of the distinct differences between dockers and plugins. But I do hope to learn quickly. I was a little bit less then clear in my post above, I tend to jump around a bit.

 

To answer your question. Yes, I already install the Community Addons Plugin. And I'm loving all the wonderful work that users have contributed here..

I've setup a few other customization to the UI and set up my users which is why I didn't want to completely erase my setup and loose all the time that I had already invested.

 

To clarify. I do intend to install Home Assistant in the form of a docker, but still have not really read that far ahead yet. Still looking for which install method will offer the most flexibility and which are still on the bleeding edge. Currently I'm about 1 month into my first Hassio setup, I have it running on a rasp.. Pi3 and It's quite useful. Been a big learning curve there too..

 

On the other hand with regards to Plex, I was under the impression that if I installed it from the Apps section that it would be installed as a "Plugin". I expect to learn more as I follow along with the tutorials and guides I find on the way. A quick browse in the community plugins addon for the key word "Plex" brings up quite a few results. I'm still not sure if I want to install Official Plex, or one of the Customized Variants. I'll have to read up on some of the benefits that the custom variants can offer. 

 

I am looking forward to setting up "DuckDNS". I would love to know if anyone knows of a version that includes/incorporates  "Let's Encrypt" like there is for Hassio.

 

With regards to installing VM's I do intend to Host a "Linux distro or two" and possibly "Mac OS" on my UnRaid machine. I was even considering perhaps running / emulating a version of android like, "Resurrection ReMix OS" to handle some notifications or taskers & experiment a bit. But first and foremost I'm here because it makes since to me to use UnRaid for its awesome NAS capabilities.

 

Thank you again for the support thus far. 

 

 

*****Edit****

 

I read somewhere that if you ran pre-clear for a length of time sufficient to begin the writing phase on all of the drives after you removed it from the array that it would pretty well destroy the data on that drive. (Which is definitely true as it would write zeros to the drive along with a pre clear signature) This was when I was still searching for a way to destroy the array without having to reinstall unraid and start over from scratch.

(My thoughts on reinstalling unraid were flawed because I'm certain unraid would have picked up on the fact that there had previously been an array on the disks even after a reinstall.)

Edited March 27, 20188 yr by TEfjLONjDON
Pre-clear vs completely reinstalling.

12 minutes ago, TEfjLONjDON said:

I'll have to read up on some of the benefits that the custom variants can offe

Auto update with every restart on the app:  "Official" or Linuxserver.  The official one is actually based off of Linux Server's flavour

PlexPass ability: "Official" / LinuxServer / Binhex

Support Level Offered: Linux Server / Binhex

 

Go with Linux Server or Binhex.  Only real difference between them (and actually all their respective apps that overlap each other) is that LinuxServer every Friday has an update available for them that pull down the latest stable version whereas Binhex waits until the release is available in the Arch repository.

5 hours ago, TEfjLONjDON said:

I read somewhere that if you ran pre-clear for a length of time sufficient to begin the writing phase on all of the drives after you removed it from the array that it would pretty well destroy the data on that drive. (Which is definitely true as it would write zeros to the drive along with a pre clear signature) This was when I was still searching for a way to destroy the array without having to reinstall unraid and start over from scratch.

(My thoughts on reinstalling unraid were flawed because I'm certain unraid would have picked up on the fact that there had previously been an array on the disks even after a reinstall.)

This is still kind of muddled or at least wrong in some respects. You can't preclear an assigned disk, and writing to one disk doesn't write to any others except for updating parity. And the simplest way to get rid of all data on a disk in the array is to format it in the array. I could go on, but...

 

Just be sure to ask for advice if you need to replace, add, remove, or otherwise change disk assignments.

8 hours ago, trurl said:

And the simplest way to get rid of all data on a disk in the array is to format it in the array. I could go on, but...

But format doesn't really remove the content of the drive - if you throw the drive away someone can still recover data.

 

Only a full overwrite will make a decent job of destroying the data unless the drive used encryption in which case it's enough to kill the encryption key.

4 hours ago, pwm said:

But format doesn't really remove the content of the drive - if you throw the drive away someone can still recover data.

 

Only a full overwrite will make a decent job of destroying the data unless the drive used encryption in which case it's enough to kill the encryption key.

Yes of course. I should have said the quickest way to get a disk in the array ready for you to use again in the array without files is to format it in the array. I think that's what the user wanted to do.

19 hours ago, TEfjLONjDON said:

begin the writing phase on all of the drives

 

13 hours ago, trurl said:

writing to one disk doesn't write to any others except for updating parity.

 

Perhaps the confusion here is due to thinking about RAID systems. unRAID is not RAID. Each disk is an independent filesytem, and parity is contained on a single disk (with another single disk for dual parity).