October 28, 201015 yr I ordered some jumpers for my WD Ears drives but the seagates don't have jumpers. I have precleared and setup my first unraid array with the seagates alone thinking it was A-OK. Is there some requirement for aligning the Seagate drives as well? Thanks!
October 28, 201015 yr Some people are recommending a forced firmware upgrade. There is no jumper to change the alignment. I am using one as parity drive, and it has performed just fine on the firmware it came with: CC34.
October 28, 201015 yr If it's already in your array, use 'smartctl -a /dev/sd#' then examine the Firmware Version at the top of the output. eg: smartctl -a /dev/sdb smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [x86_64-slackware-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright © 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Device Model: ST32000542AS Serial Number: 6XWxxxxx Firmware Version: CC35 User Capacity: 2,000,398,934,016 bytes
October 28, 201015 yr Author Is CC35 the one that makes a difference? I am CC34. What a PITA. I am going to have to preclear these drives for 30 hours again aren't I?! Neil
October 28, 201015 yr CC35 is the latest firmware. I don't think it will force you to pre-clear again. Firmware is not data that is seen on the disk. It shouldn't affect your data one way or the other. It might affect things if the drive were formatted.
October 28, 201015 yr Author Everyone said that if you add the jumper for the EARS drives you had to re-preclear and format. Sucky
October 28, 201015 yr That's for a jumper, as opposed to a firmware upgrade. Also, I believe the EARS drives don't do well if you format & use them and then try to add the jumper later. Some people have had to RMA their drives in order to use them with unRAID.
October 28, 201015 yr This firmware update is non-destructive. You will not need to re-preclear the drives.
October 28, 201015 yr The jumper on the EARS causes the drive to add 1 to every sector number. So sector 0 is not accessible, physical sector 1 is accessed when sector 0 is requested, physical sector 64 is accessed when sector 63 is requested, etc. This is needed to improve performance on the drive. Once this sector alignment is changed, any data on the disk is inaccessible, even the signature created by preclear. But a preclear option COULD be created to quickly fix the signature. (I'm not suggesting this should be done, just that it could be done to eliminate the mystery of why preclear has to reclear the entire disk after the jumper is added). The Seagate drive has no performance issue with the sector alignment. It does not use 4k sectors. But an issue exists with it's logic that can result in clicking and early death of a disk. Only disks manufactured in certain locations / dates are supposedly susceptible to this issue, but users on other forums have found that this is not always true and that everyone should update to CC35. I have not heard of anyone that updated and had a problem - although I have heard of a few people that couldn't make the update work. Me? Neither of my two drives were identified by seagate's web site as needing the update, but I updated them anyway. The update is finicky requiring the drive to be connected to sata0 or sata1 on the motherboard. For me, that was all that was required to "force" the update. It wouldn't matter if you preclear the disk before or after the firmware update. You could even update a drive that was formatted and had data on it and perform this firmware update and not disturb parity.
December 6, 201015 yr If it's already in your array, use 'smartctl -a /dev/sd#' then examine the Firmware Version at the top of the output. eg: smartctl -a /dev/sdb smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [x86_64-slackware-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright © 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Device Model: ST32000542AS Serial Number: 6XWxxxxx Firmware Version: CC35 User Capacity: 2,000,398,934,016 bytes This is the drive I just bought. I don't have a separate computer to load this in to and up date the firmware. I also don't have an optical drive to run the CC35 bootable CD. So how do I update the firmware in this drive? Thanks
December 6, 201015 yr I wouldn't worry about it then. I ran for months with CC32 and CC34, one day, needing something to do, I sat down and upgraded the firmware on my 5 drives. If you feel you must, I'd suggest a trip to a friend's house. The upgrade can be done at any time even after it has been in use for months. You won't loose data, it is invisible to unRAID.
December 6, 201015 yr I wouldn't worry about it then. I ran for months with CC32 and CC34, one day, needing something to do, I sat down and upgraded the firmware on my 5 drives. If you feel you must, I'd suggest a trip to a friend's house. The upgrade can be done at any time even after it has been in use for months. You won't loose data, it is invisible to unRAID. Ok, Thanks
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