Hi,

 

I have finally settled on unRAID as my server solution after trying out everything under the sun.  I have a 1 TB EARS without the jumper in use formatted to NTFS that I am about to add as the parity drive.

 

To be clear do I just delete the partitions in Windows, then add the jumper and insert it into unraid, run a pre-clear and then add it as parity?

 

Is this enough?

 

Kryspy

I'm about to utilize 4 EARS drives that I had in my Drobo.  I posted a thread asking a similar question:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=8644.0

 

The short of it is, it looks like it is recommended to run the "dd" command to write some zeros first (while unjumpered), jumper it, then run the dd command again.  The exact command can be found in the above mentioned thread.

 

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

So,

 

Run this command:

 

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=500   

 

Kryspy

Keep in mind this may not work. Nothing would work for me on a couple of drives

And also sdX needs to be the device of the disk being zeroed.  Be sure to use the correct sdX (where X = a, b, c etc...)

Otherwise, you will be zeroing the wrong disk.

 

To confirm, FIRST type

smartctl -d ata -i /dev/sdX

with the same device name.  It will print the model and serial number of the drive.

Okay so did it without the jumper and with and all seems well.  I had a monitor hooked up while booting and no errors or hangs were evident.    Sp can I now run a pre-clear on it and add it as parity or do I not need to run a pre-clear if using it for parity?

 

Kryspy

Run pre-clear. The preclear does a preread and a post read of each disk before zeroing out all sectors and "tests" any drive before it is added to the array.  If you have any data to transfer to the server, you may want to wait to add it to the array as a parity drive after the transfer is complete.

 

 

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Add_Ons#Add_On_Scripts (scroll down to Preclear disk)

 

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Configuration_Tutorial#Preclear_Hard_Drives

 

Okay so did it without the jumper and with and all seems well.   I had a monitor hooked up while booting and no errors or hangs were evident.    Sp can I now run a pre-clear on it and add it as parity or do I not need to run a pre-clear if using it for parity?

 

Kryspy

You do not need to perform a pre-clear, but you should, as it will allow you to know the drive is performing correctly BEFORE you trust your data to it.  The pre-clearing process will burn-in the drive, testing its ability to be read, and written to, and be read back.

 

If you do not pre-clear the drive before installing it as parity, calculating the initial parity will write the drive.  Then a subsequent parity check will "read" the drive.  It is only on that subsequent check where you'll learn of un-readable sectors.  When detected they will be automatically re-written by the unRAID software, and they should then be re-allocated.   You'll see "errors" on the web-management page on the far right of the line for the parity disk. Those are "read" errors.

 

Personally, I'd rather not wait until then (after it is assigned to the array) to learn the drive is not working as expected.  Now, the failure rate of new drives might be one out of 100, but I'd rather not be that one.

Pre-clear it is then

 

Kryspy

 

Pre-clear finished.    Some seek error anomalies but aside from that looks ok.

 

Kryspy

Pre-clear finished.    Some seek error anomalies but aside from that looks ok.

 

Kryspy

No abnormalities at all.  Just the factory value of 253 being changed to an initial value of 200 as you start to use the drive.

I really gotta learn the craft of what all this stuff means or I am going to worry myself to death

 

Kryspy