4 hours ago, binhex said:

Nothing wrong with that drive, looks good to me

Sent from my 22021211RG using Tapatalk
 

Thanks, are these lines a matter? I found these on the detailed report

 

== Disk /dev/sdd has NOT been successfully precleared

== Postread detected un-expected non-zero bytes on disk==

Edited December 28, 20223 yr by winglam

9 hours ago, winglam said:

Postread detected un-expected non-zero bytes on disk==

i would assume some other process has written to the disk after the zeroing of the drive, you may find unraid wants to clear the drive again, but other than that its of no concern.

Is this still the way to preclear? seems awfully convoluted I was hoping it might just be a few gui clicks.

23 minutes ago, sunwind said:

Is this still the way to preclear? seems awfully convoluted I was hoping it might just be a few gui clicks.

Preclears are no longer required to add the drive to your array. The UI will clear the drive for you. If you want to test a new drive by running a few cycles then this is probably the easiest way. It really is just a few clicks.

3 hours ago, wgstarks said:

Preclears are no longer required to add the drive to your array. The UI will clear the drive for you. If you want to test a new drive by running a few cycles then this is probably the easiest way. It really is just a few clicks.

 

oh ok thanks. I was actually wanting to 'preclear' some 8 year old drives and see what happened because they may be dying I'm not sure, what else could I do to sort of stress them and see if they fail?

21 minutes ago, sunwind said:

 

oh ok thanks. I was actually wanting to 'preclear' some 8 year old drives and see what happened because they may be dying I'm not sure, what else could I do to sort of stress them and see if they fail?

You’ll need to delete whatever partitions are on them using UD+ and then you should see a preclear icon. Once you select it you’ll get options for how many cycles and how often you want notifications.

Hi, I just noticed that the container size is 1.31GB, is this normal? And how can I remove the docker fully without affecting anything else?

binhex-preclear 1.31 GB 23.6 MB 22.4 kB

29 minutes ago, CyberMew said:

Hi, I just noticed that the container size is 1.31GB, is this normal?

this image contains a full ui so yeah its large.

 

30 minutes ago, CyberMew said:

And how can I remove the docker fully without affecting anything else?

simple - left click the container and select 'remove' make sure also remove image is ticked and then click on 'yes delete it'.

For anyone interested, the below is the minimum required to run this container using docker-compose, based off the example docker command from the repo. You can modify it easily to use traefik or another reverse proxy instead of accessing directly by port. Change $CONTDIR to wherever you want to store the logs.

 

  preclear:
    container_name: preclear
    image: ghcr.io/binhex/arch-preclear:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    privileged: true
    ports:
      - 5900:5900
      - 6080:6080
    environment:
      - WEBPAGE_TITLE=Preclear
      - VNC_PASSWORD=mypassword
      - ENABLE_STARTUP_SCRIPTS=yes
      - UMASK=000
      - PUID=0
      - PGID=0
    volumes:
      - $CONTDIR/preclear/config:/config
      - /boot/config/disk.cfg:/unraid/config/disk.cfg:ro
      - /boot/config/super.dat:/unraid/config/super.dat:ro
      - /var/local/emhttp/disks.ini:/unraid/emhttp/disks.ini:ro
      - /usr/local/sbin/mdcmd:/unraid/mdcmd:ro
      - /dev/disk/by-id:/unraid/disk/by-id:ro
      - /boot/config/plugins/dynamix/dynamix.cfg:/unraid/config/plugins/dynamix/dynamix.cfg:ro
      - /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf:/unraid/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf:ro
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro

 

Edited April 19, 20242 yr by nearcatch

On 12/8/2021 at 5:34 AM, betaman said:

So I just went to check on my preclear and the VNC remote screen looks like attached. How do I know if it’s still running? It’s as if there’s a terminal window oversized on my screen but I can’t scroll to see any command line?

 

Edit: So I can see from main UnRAID screen the disk is still being written to as it was in the zeroing phase. I just can’t get the terminal window to show up?

 

Edit 2: So I managed to get the terminal window back but no idea what I did exactly. I was trying to set different scaling options to see if that would work but no change.  I pinched the screen (working on an iPad) and it was back. Prior I was using AnyDesk on my Windows vm to check progress. Perhaps the combination of pinching between the two caused it?? 

 

 

Well, 2.5 yrs later and I have the same issue...ugh. Will check the ipad to see if I can get it back there.

After many years of running preclear - both from the plugin and now the docker, I don't think I've ever seen this one:

 

That's:

================================================================== 1.22
=                unRAID server Pre-Clear disk /dev/sde
=               cycle 1 of 1, partition start on sector 64 
= Disk Pre-Clear-Read completed                                 DONE
= Step 1 of 10 - Copying zeros to first 2048k bytes             DONE
= Step 2 of 10 - Copying zeros to remainder of disk to clear it DONE
= Step 3 of 10 - Disk is now cleared from MBR onward.           DONE
= Step 4 of 10 - Clearing MBR bytes for partition 2,3 & 4       DONE
= Step 5 of 10 - Clearing MBR code area                         DONE
= Step 6 of 10 - Setting MBR signature bytes                    DONE
= Step 7 of 10 - Setting partition 1 to precleared state        DONE
= Step 8 of 10 - Notifying kernel we changed the partitioning   DONE
= Step 9 of 10 - Creating the /dev/disk/by* entries             DONE
= Step 10 of 10 - Verifying if the MBR is cleared.              DONE
= 
Elapsed Time:  29:53:05
========================================================================1.22
==
== SORRY: Disk /dev/sde MBR could NOT be precleared
==
== out4= 00000
== out5= 00000
============================================================================
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes copied, 3.7875e-05 s, 0.0 kB/s
0000000
[root@a2bc95cd16ba /]# 

Don't know that I've ever had an MBR related error before.

 

Additionally, it was throwing a ton of errors while clearing (as viewed from UD):

and now that I've got the preclear error, I'm seeing this on the disk details in UD:

Plus, I've got a nasty squeaking sound coming from the server that's never been there before.

 

This drive had right at zero power on hours when I installed it and first checked the attributes (forgot to do that immediately, but the POH was roughly equal to the run time of the preclear at that time, so it was pretty close to zero).

 

Is this likely:
A) bad SATA cabling/poor seating in the hot-swap bay?

B) DOA hard drive?
Is there any chance that popping it out of the hot-swap bay and plugging it back in might help?

 

I'd provide the full log file(s), but the most recent logs in ...\appdata\binhex-preclear\preclear_reports are from 2022 - nothing from this drive's run. If they're held temporarily elsewhere, point me at 'em and I'll upload here.

On 7/7/2023 at 9:28 PM, wgstarks said:

Preclears are no longer required to add the drive to your array. The UI will clear the drive for you. If you want to test a new drive by running a few cycles then this is probably the easiest way. It really is just a few clicks.

I've added a new parity disk a year ago and i swear i used this to preclear it... but if i start the docker now and type 'pre' i get an error : sh: pre: command not found

 

has this docker become invalid? I did update it? what am i missing? And where is the preclear in the UI you are talking about?

 

Oh, i removed so i could re-install, but it can not be found in the apps anymore? Is that correct?

Edited April 30, 20251 yr by jowi

1 hour ago, jowi said:

Oh, i removed so i could re-install, but it can not be found in the apps anymore? Is that correct?

 

I don't have a direct answer to your question but I have been using the Unassigned Devices Preclear for the past couple of years now.  It worked the last time I used it which was in the fall of 2024. 

Thanks, yeah after some searching and googling i found out that the unassigned devices preclear is the way to go apparently :)

I was about to launch a preclear on my new 14TB drive when I noticed this:

Device     Start         End     Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sdq1   2048 27344762879 27344760832 12.7T Microsoft basic data
########################################################################
invoked as  /usr/local/bin/preclear_binhex.sh -f /dev/sdq
########################################################################
(partition starting on sector 63)
(it will not be 4k-aligned)
Are you absolutely sure you want to clear this drive?
(Answer Yes to continue. Capital 'Y', lower case 'es'): Yes^C

The (it will not be 4k-aligned) caught my attention.

According to the FAQ:
if preclear -a or -A not defined then 63 or 64 will be chosen based on Unraid config, UNLESS the drive is > 2.2TB, in which case it will always be 64.

I cancelled the run and kicked it off with -a, but this seems like an error in the script. I don't ever recall having run into something like this, but this is also the largest drive I've ever precleared.

7 minutes ago, Free Man said:

about to launch a preclear on my new 14TB drive when I noticed this:

I don't see this application available on the Apps page anymore. See the posts just above yours.

20 minutes ago, trurl said:

I don't see this application available on the Apps page anymore.

Is this broken? Should I cancel the running preclear and switch then?

Container preclear aborted. Process restarted via UD preclear plugin.

Edited March 2Mar 2 by Free Man

19 hours ago, Free Man said:

Is this broken? Should I cancel the running preclear and switch then?

Container preclear aborted. Process restarted via UD preclear plugin.

It is unsupported, I would recommend switching to the preclear plugin.