October 12, 201015 yr I have two NTFS WD EARS drives with data that I plan to migrate to my unRAID. The drives where installed in my Windows XP workstation so they were aligned with the WD Drive Alignment software. I plan to first mount them as NTFS in unRAID to move the data. Then I will preclear the drives to use as normal unRAID data drives. I know I will need to jumper these drives prior to running preclear, but do I need to jumper them so that I can mount the NTFS volume to move the data?
October 12, 201015 yr I have two NTFS WD EARS drives with data that I plan to migrate to my unRAID. The drives where installed in my Windows XP workstation so they were aligned with the WD Drive Alignment software. I plan to first mount them as NTFS in unRAID to move the data. Then I will preclear the drives to use as normal unRAID data drives. I know I will need to jumper these drives prior to running preclear, but do I need to jumper them so that I can mount the NTFS volume to move the data? No. Do not jumper them before mounting them as an NTFS drive... In fact, if you did they would be un-readable as an NTFS drive. Joe L.
October 12, 201015 yr Author Thanks Joe. I have not jumpered them and was afraid to turn on my unRAID server until I know for sure what to do. I may have lost 2TB on my Seagate ST32000542AS Barracuda LP 2TB drive already, see here, and I am now being extra careful as I continue to get my unRAID server running and migrate the data over to it.
October 12, 201015 yr I usually just migrate files over the network. Is there any advantage to mounting the drive internally? It doesn't seem to offer much if any speed advantage, given the write limitations of unRAID.
October 12, 201015 yr I usually just migrate files over the network. Is there any advantage to mounting the drive internally? It doesn't seem to offer much if any speed advantage, given the write limitations of unRAID. If you have a fast network connection it could be similar if there is a parity drive assigned. With modern hardware you could get up to 40 MB/s. It was milfronte who talked about mounting it in the unRAID server to make it go as fast as possible. If you do not yet have a parity disk assigned the local mount may be quite a bit faster.
October 12, 201015 yr Author Yes I am migrating data as part of a new build. The existing drives will be part of unRAID and so I figured might as well mount the drives locally for speed and eventually conversion. Another factor is the drives are coming from a machine that only has 100 Megabits LAN.
October 12, 201015 yr Ah, got it. No parity makes a big difference, especially if you're on a 10/100 LAN. By the way, I just bought an 8 port gigabit switch at Amazon for $40. Sustained transfer rates between my non unRAID computers is around 60-80 MB/s, or 480-640 Mb/s.
October 16, 201015 yr Author I am trying to install an advanced format drive that has been aligned in Windows XP with the WD Drive Alignment tool. When I had this drive installed without the jumper, unRAID recognized it as an NTFS drive with no problems. So I applied the jumper to pin 7-8 with the intention of running preclear on the drive to wipe it clean. unRAID did not like that at all. On boot, I started getting a lot of errors such as these: Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x2 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20.00: irq_stat 0x00020002, device error via SDB FIS Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20.00: cmd 60/08:08:a8:88:e0/00:00:e8:00:00/40 tag 1 ncq 4096 in Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: res 41/01:00:af:88:e0/ff:00:e8:00:00/40 Emask 0x401 (device error) <F> Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20.00: status: { DRDY ERR } Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20.00: configured for UDMA/100 Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20: EH complete Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20.00: irq_stat 0x00060002, device error via SDB FIS Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20.00: cmd 60/08:00:a8:88:e0/00:00:e8:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: res 41/01:00:af:88:e0/ff:00:e8:00:00/40 Emask 0x401 (device error) <F> Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20.00: status: { DRDY ERR } Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20.00: configured for UDMA/100 Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20: EH complete Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Oct 16 15:35:25 Beanstalk kernel: ata20.00: irq_stat 0x00060002, device error via SDB FIS It gets to the point where the drive connection gets downgraded to UDMA/66 before unRAID is up and running. Then unMenu is unresponsive and when I try running the preclear_disk.sh script, it just froze after hitting enter. Even powering down unRAID took an excessive long time. So I decided to attach the drive to my Windows XP machine and run the WD Diagnostic with the jumper. The short SMART test failed. I removed the jumper and ran the short test again and it passed. I am in the process of running the long test now. Then I will zero the drive out using the WD Diagnostic tool. It appears the WD Drive Alignment tool alters the firmware to begin at a certain block and you cannot use the jumper after running the WD Drive Alignment Tool. However, I recalled that I once tested to see if a zeroing of the drive retains the alignment of the drive by the WD Drive Alignment tool and it does not. So I hope to zero the drive after the long SMART test using the WD Diagnostic tool and then unRAID will not complain. Since I have not assigned a parity drive, can I skip the preclear and just install the drive into the array?
October 17, 201015 yr Since I have not assigned a parity drive, can I skip the preclear and just install the drive into the array? Yes.
October 17, 201015 yr Wait I just read the above comment that you don't have to preclear if you don't have a parity drive assigned?! I am very very confused about when and where to pre-clear and what it does. I read many posts (many of them Joe's) and it still is very unclear to me. Can I get and others here who are scratching their head get the beginners / idiots guide for preclearing either from scratch or adding drives after the fact? Thanks!
October 18, 201015 yr Wait I just read the above comment that you don't have to preclear if you don't have a parity drive assigned?! I am very very confused about when and where to pre-clear and what it does. I read many posts (many of them Joe's) and it still is very unclear to me. Can I get and others here who are scratching their head get the beginners / idiots guide for preclearing either from scratch or adding drives after the fact? Thanks! He said "can I" not "should I" The unRAID array will not have an extended downtime while IT clears the drive. It skips that step if there is no parity drive assigned since it has no need to ensure correct parity (there is no parity) So, therefore, he can skip that step. He should NOT skip that step if he wants to test and burn-in the drive prior to trusting it with his data. ... but he "can" skip it and take the risk the drive not will have problems early in its life or unreadable/unwritable sectors. His choice.
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