January 16, 20197 yr I have a brand new 8TB drive that I put in and precleared. I want to make it my cache disk, but it's telling me, "Unmountable: No file system". ...so I think to myself, "cool. I just need to format it" but the "format" button is greyed out. What am I missing here...??? Edited January 18, 20197 yr by rmp5s
January 16, 20197 yr Community Expert 7 minutes ago, rmp5s said: I just need to format it" but the "format" button is greyed out. That's weird, try rebooting, if still the same post diags, maybe something visible there.
January 16, 20197 yr There should be a checkbox that's near the button that you have to click in order for the button to become clickable.Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk
January 17, 20197 yr Author 10 hours ago, johnnie.black said: That's weird, try rebooting, if still the same post diags, maybe something visible there. That did the trick. Thanks! 9 hours ago, jonp said: There should be a checkbox that's near the button that you have to click in order for the button to become clickable. Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk Nope. There is not checkbox, as can be seen in the screenshot above. It was just a glitch. Solved by a reboot.
January 17, 20197 yr Community Expert 26 minutes ago, rmp5s said: That did the trick. Thanks! Nope. There is not checkbox, as can be seen in the screenshot above. It was just a glitch. Solved by a reboot. That screenshot is showing the Format button for an Unassigned Device. Totally different thing than formatting a drive assigned to a cache slot. Not what you needed to do but to format an Unassigned Device you must enable "destructive mode" in Settings for Unassigned Devices. What you needed to do was get Unraid to format the disk AFTER you assign it to a cache slot. The checkbox to enable format in that case is in Main - Array Operations.
January 18, 20197 yr Author On 1/16/2019 at 6:14 PM, trurl said: That screenshot is showing the Format button for an Unassigned Device. Totally different thing than formatting a drive assigned to a cache slot. Not what you needed to do but to format an Unassigned Device you must enable "destructive mode" in Settings for Unassigned Devices. What you needed to do was get Unraid to format the disk AFTER you assign it to a cache slot. The checkbox to enable format in that case is in Main - Array Operations. Yea, I just noticed that the dashboard says "parity disk not present" even though I have the new 8TB assigned as a cache drive. Guess that's why? Not seeing a format checkbox, though. Array stopped: Array running: Am I missing something?
January 18, 20197 yr 17 minutes ago, rmp5s said: Not seeing a format checkbox, though. Post a screen shot of the Array Devices and Cache section of the Main tab
January 18, 20197 yr Community Expert 18 minutes ago, rmp5s said: I just noticed that the dashboard says "parity disk not present" even though I have the new 8TB assigned as a cache drive. Parity and cache have nothing to do with each other. The whole point of cache is it is not part of the parity array. Also, 8TB is an unusually large disk to assign as cache. Do you perhaps really intend to assign that disk as parity?
January 18, 20197 yr Author 10 hours ago, Squid said: Post a screen shot of the Array Devices and Cache section of the Main tab 9 hours ago, trurl said: Parity and cache have nothing to do with each other. The whole point of cache is it is not part of the parity array. Also, 8TB is an unusually large disk to assign as cache. Do you perhaps really intend to assign that disk as parity? Oh...I thought the two were the same. Just looking for some fault tolerance and I thought the parity drive had to be as big as your biggest array drive. Mine (for now) will be 8TB.
January 18, 20197 yr Community Expert 6 minutes ago, rmp5s said: Oh...I thought the two were the same. Just looking for some fault tolerance and I thought the parity drive had to be as big as your biggest array drive. Mine (for now) will be 8TB. No - they are completely different. The parity is about protecting the array disks and you are correct in it needing to be at least as large as the largest data disk, Cache disk is about providing higher performance storage for running apps/VMs and for the initial write of new files. If you DO want a cache disk then it is typical (although not required) to use a SSD as this gives the highest performance. A cache disk has no minimum or maximum size requirement - you determine what meets your basic usage pattern. If the cache disk is a single drive then it has no redundancy (many are happy with this). A cache can also be run as a 'pool' of multiple drives which gives redundancy if that is important for the files that you place on there. However be aware if running a pool with more than one drive that this requires the cache to be formatted as BTRFS and that has proved more fragile and prone to corruption that XFS. Not sure what you have put on the cache disk so far. If you want to repurpose the current cache disk for use as a parity disk, then you make sure that the VM and docker services are stopped; set any shares that might be using the cache disk to Use Cache=Yes (if this sounds counter-intuitive turn on the GUI help to see what the actual affect of this setting is) and then run mover to get any files currently on the cache disk moved back to the array. After doing that you can stop the array; unassign the cache disk; re-assign the drive as parity1; start the array to start building parity (it will probably take most of a day with a 8TB drive.). At this point you can re-enable the docker and/or VM services if you use them. You could then later add a smaller drive as cache (assuming you want one).
January 18, 20197 yr And side note, the reason you weren't seeing the format checkbox is because the 8TB is already formatted
January 18, 20197 yr Community Expert 1 hour ago, rmp5s said: Oh...I thought the two were the same. If you stop the array you should see the proper place to assign your parity disk, just above disk1. It is clearly labeled Parity, whereas Cache is also clearly labeled and a completely different section on the Main page. Did you follow any sort of guide when setting up your server?
January 18, 20197 yr Author 4 hours ago, itimpi said: No - they are completely different. The parity is about protecting the array disks and you are correct in it needing to be at least as large as the largest data disk, Cache disk is about providing higher performance storage for running apps/VMs and for the initial write of new files. If you DO want a cache disk then it is typical (although not required) to use a SSD as this gives the highest performance. A cache disk has no minimum or maximum size requirement - you determine what meets your basic usage pattern. If the cache disk is a single drive then it has no redundancy (many are happy with this). A cache can also be run as a 'pool' of multiple drives which gives redundancy if that is important for the files that you place on there. However be aware if running a pool with more than one drive that this requires the cache to be formatted as BTRFS and that has proved more fragile and prone to corruption that XFS. Not sure what you have put on the cache disk so far. If you want to repurpose the current cache disk for use as a parity disk, then you make sure that the VM and docker services are stopped; set any shares that might be using the cache disk to Use Cache=Yes (if this sounds counter-intuitive turn on the GUI help to see what the actual affect of this setting is) and then run mover to get any files currently on the cache disk moved back to the array. After doing that you can stop the array; unassign the cache disk; re-assign the drive as parity1; start the array to start building parity (it will probably take most of a day with a 8TB drive.). At this point you can re-enable the docker and/or VM services if you use them. You could then later add a smaller drive as cache (assuming you want one). D'oh!! Thanks, man. There was nothing on the drive yet so I just kicked it out of the cache spot, deleted the partition, rebooted and added it as parity. Parity is building now. Thanks, EVERYONE!! You guys rock!!
December 20, 20196 yr 6 new disks.. all pre-cleared... and this is what I got when I started the Array.
December 20, 20196 yr Just so there's no misunderstanding, these are all new drives that you just precleared and are supposed to be empty? You still have to format them. There's a check box when you start the array If not, then post your diagnostics
December 20, 20196 yr 5 minutes ago, Squid said: Just so there's no misunderstanding, these are all new drives that you just precleared and are supposed to be empty? You still have to format them. There's a check box when you start the array If not, then post your diagnostics Ahh Got it. Formatting commencing.... See you tomorrow lmao.
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