Added my 6th disk to my unRaid about a month ago and everything seemed to go fine.  I had not noticed that the "Unformatted disk(s) present" message is always present, even after multiple shutdowns and reboots, I also ran a full check and still the message is present.  All of my disks seem to operate fine.  If I press the Format button, will I lose data?  I'm about to add another drive and am worried that formatting the new drive may unexpectedly format one of my existing drives?

 

Resetting the array will just cause the parity drive to be rebuilt using the existing data drive, right?

 

How does the unRaid system keep track of the status of each drive, and why does it think I need to format a drive?

don't remember if the message has been there since I added the 6th drive or whether it reappeared at some point.

 

Thanks.. Ed

That is something I have never seen with my 10 drives. If it were my system, I would stop the array, reboot, then start and rebuild the parity. But that is just me.

That Format button should not be there.  I notice you have only 8 drives in your array.  Perhaps there is something not right with your 'go' script.  Can you email me the contents of it please?

That is something I have never seen with my 10 drives. If it were my system, I would stop the array, reboot, then start and rebuild the parity. But that is just me.

 

Do you mean rebuilding the array using the button on the tools page?  I assume that this only wipes out the parity disk and rebuilds the parity. 

 

Anyway, I emailed Tom and I'll wait for his reply.

 

Thanks.. Ed

I too am seeing this spurious Unformatted Disk message in an 8-drive array configuration (currently with 6 disks present).

 

Clicking the button (with fingers crossed ) does nothing. stopping/starting/rebooting the array does not remove the button.

 

All I did, to switch to the 8-drive configuration (I currently have only 1 Promise card) was, edit model=MD800/IDE (from model=CUSTOM that Tom shipped me) in model.cfg, clear the array and re-sync parity. I did not touch the GO script, This seemed a less error-prone way to switch to 8 drives (for now, until I go up to 12).

 

With the default config, the 4-8 drives get mounted at disk 8,9,10,11 which was a little annoying and why I changed the model.

 

Did you guys every figure out why the format disk(s) button was there.

I have done some playing around with my UnRaid recently and changed the "Model=" item in the config file from 1200 to 800 as you guys have done.  What I notice is that with any number drives short of the full 8 you get that "Format" button but once you fire in the final drive the button goes away.  Looks like a bug to me....!

I currently have model=CUSTOM in my model.cfg, with a totally custom go script (as I am mixing 8IDE drives with 1 SATA), and I still see the errant Format button.

 

Here is my go script. Tom, let me know if you need any more info to help diagnose this:

#!/bin/bash

#

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:$PATH

 

# Strip off trailing CR's from DOS-formatted file

fromdos </boot/model.cfg >/var/tmp/model.cfg

source /var/tmp/model.cfg

 

# This is for an 8-disk system (1 promise ide controllers)

# Where disk 10 is a SATA disk connected to "Serial ATA connector 0" on the D865GLCLK,

# and disk1..8 are IDE disks.

 

# Load Intel SATA driver

modprobe ata_piix

 

# Create a device link for it in /dev/scsi

# SATA connector 0 should show up as /dev/scsi/sdh1-1c0i010

# SATA connector 1 should show up as /dev/scsi/sdh2-2c0i010

scsidev

 

# Disks 0..3 (motherboard Pri/Sec)

hdparm -c1d1a0m8A1W1u1  /dev/hda

hdparm -c1d1a0m8A1W1u1  /dev/hdb

hdparm -c1d1a0m8A1W1u1  /dev/hdc

hdparm -c1d1a0m8A1W1u1  /dev/hdd

# Disks 4..7 (pci slot closest to CPU)

#hdparm -c1d1a0m8A1W1u1  /dev/hdi

#hdparm -c1d1a0m8A1W1u1  /dev/hdj

#hdparm -c1d1a0m8A1W1u1  /dev/hdk

#hdparm -c1d1a0m8A1W1u1  /dev/hdl

# Disks 8..11 (pci slot further from CPU)

hdparm -c1d1a0m8A1W1u1  /dev/hde

hdparm -c1d1a0m8A1W1u1  /dev/hdf

hdparm -c1d1a0m8A1W1u1  /dev/hdg

hdparm -c1d1a0m8A1W1u1  /dev/hdh

#

SUPER=$(device /dev/sda2)

SLOT0=$(device /dev/hda)

SLOT1=$(device /dev/hdb)

SLOT2=$(device /dev/hdc)

SLOT3=$(device /dev/hdd)

SLOT4=$(device /dev/hde)

SLOT5=$(device /dev/hdf)

SLOT6=$(device /dev/hdg)

SLOT7=$(device /dev/hdh)

SLOT10=$(device /dev/scsi/sdh1-1c0i0l0)

SLOTS=$SLOT0,$SLOT1,$SLOT2,$SLOT3,$SLOT4,$SLOT5,$SLOT6,$SLOT7,$SLOT10

 

# Load the UnRaid driver

modprobe md-mod super=$SUPER slots=$SLOTS

 

# Start the Management Utility

emhttp &

Yes, we're looking into this.  Have not been able to reproduce this exact problem, but have found a similar problem.

Awesome, thanks for the info Tom, glad to hear you're still at it.

 

It's not a big deal, it's just a little scary. It tends to freak out the new user who is trying to get their grips around how unRaid works and building up a new serve. If you push the button, nothing happens. Let me know if you need any more info, I'm even willing to tunnel telnet or SSH in for you (I believe you know the root password  )

 

But don't let this little thing hold up that awesome secret suace I'm sure you've been cooking up.