darrenyorston Posted January 19, 2019 Share Posted January 19, 2019 I am wanting to remove three drives from my array. I utilised the Unbalance plugin to move all data of the disk I want to remove. I then stopped the array and changed the file format of the three drives from their existing format. I then restarted the array and formatted all three drives. I then utilised Midnight commander to create a folder in each disk called "clear-me". When I run the clear an array drive script it tells me "Checked 8 drives, did not find an empty drive ready and marked for clearing! " How can there be files or folders on the drives after I changed the file type and reformatted the drives? What else do I need to do? Link to comment
JorgeB Posted January 19, 2019 Share Posted January 19, 2019 Unfortunately the script author has been MIA for a long time, first try just marking one drive, though there are some reports that the script runs very slowly on recent Unraid releases, if that doesn't work you can clear them manually, one at at time, see: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/61614-shrink-array-question/?tab=comments#comment-606335 Link to comment
darrenyorston Posted January 19, 2019 Author Share Posted January 19, 2019 I got it to work after changing the file system type a number of times and refornatting the drives. Alas the script kept crashing so Ill try the way you linked. Thanks. Link to comment
darrenyorston Posted January 24, 2019 Author Share Posted January 24, 2019 @johnnie.black is it necessary to go through the process of removing the drive from an old array if it is going to be pre-cleared in the new? I am almost finished transferring everything over to my new server. I'm going to have 6 spinning drives and 4 cache drives to move over once all the data is transferred. Can I simply format the drives on the old server, remove them from the system then install them in the new server and pre-clear? Sure would save a large amount of time. Link to comment
itimpi Posted January 24, 2019 Share Posted January 24, 2019 6 hours ago, darrenyorston said: @johnnie.black is it necessary to go through the process of removing the drive from an old array if it is going to be pre-cleared in the new? I am almost finished transferring everything over to my new server. I'm going to have 6 spinning drives and 4 cache drives to move over once all the data is transferred. Can I simply format the drives on the old server, remove them from the system then install them in the new server and pre-clear? Sure would save a large amount of time. It is not that simple unfortunately! You cannot remove a drive without affecting parity unless it is all zeroes. A formatted drive is never all zeroes as it has data relating to the fact there is a file system present. Not sure why you would want to pre-clear the drive in the new server unless you do not trust it and want to carry out a confidence check. When adding a drive to an existing system Unraid itself will clear the drive if needed (and this Clear is much faster than a typical pre-clear as it involves just a write pass of the disk). Link to comment
darrenyorston Posted January 24, 2019 Author Share Posted January 24, 2019 I have always pre-cleared disks before putting them in the array, even brand new disks. Since I started utilising unraid the advice was to pre-clear so as to ensure the disks I was installing were good. I have had a number of brand new disks, as recent as October, fail pre-clear. I returned them to the supplier and received replacements. If I can move those disks into my new array without any intermediary steps then I would be saving days. If clearing disks isn't necessary then it would have been simpler just say that I could pull them out of the old server and install them in the new. Link to comment
JonathanM Posted January 24, 2019 Share Posted January 24, 2019 Do you want / need to maintain valid parity in the old server? Link to comment
darrenyorston Posted January 24, 2019 Author Share Posted January 24, 2019 No. There won't be an old server. Once I have moved the last of my data over to the new server it will be dissembled. Its disks will be added to the new server as data drives. Link to comment
trurl Posted January 24, 2019 Share Posted January 24, 2019 2 hours ago, darrenyorston said: No. There won't be an old server. Once I have moved the last of my data over to the new server it will be dissembled. Its disks will be added to the new server as data drives. One possibility if it would work for you would be to just create a new array in the new server using the old disks with all their data intact. If you already have an array in the new server you could still New Config to add the old disks with their data and just rebuild parity. Sounds like you may be going to a lot of trouble for no reason if your end goal is to have the old disks and all of their data in the new array. And just to give you some more information on clearing disks. Unraid only requires a clear disk when you are adding a disk to a new data slot in an array that already has valid parity. This is so parity will remain valid. If you don't preclear a disk when Unraid requires a clear disk (only this one situation) it will clear it. The only purpose of preclear these days is to test a new disk, to possibly get it beyond "infant mortality". For disk that have been working well and have no SMART warnings I wouldn't bother. Link to comment
JonathanM Posted January 24, 2019 Share Posted January 24, 2019 1 hour ago, darrenyorston said: No. There won't be an old server. Once I have moved the last of my data over to the new server it will be dissembled. Its disks will be added to the new server as data drives. Water under the bridge now, but if you would have stated what you were trying to accomplish as an end goal, you could have avoided ALL this. There is no need to empty the drives and run the drive clear script to remove drives if you don't need to keep parity intact. Link to comment
trurl Posted January 24, 2019 Share Posted January 24, 2019 This thread brings to (my) mind the subject of backups. Do you have another copy external to your server of anything important and irreplaceable? Link to comment
darrenyorston Posted January 24, 2019 Author Share Posted January 24, 2019 Offcourse, two. One local, one off-site. I also have the original data which I was in the process of moving from the old server to the new server. The new server has a larger storage capacity with new disks. I had moved all my data to the new array and wanted to take the smaller 3TB disks from the old array and add them to the new array. They have no data on them now. Link to comment
trurl Posted January 24, 2019 Share Posted January 24, 2019 OK. Is there still an unanswered question here? You can add those empty (not clear) disks to the new array and Unraid will clear them before it formats them. No need for preclear unless you have some reason to think they aren't trustworthy. And if you do have some reason maybe better to leave them out. Link to comment
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