So it's a year later, and we still see people formatting instead of file checking unmountable disks on a regular basis, sometimes more than one a week.

 

Could we discuss moving the format option to the disk settings page, possibly below the file system check section? Maybe if people are presented with the correct option of doing a file system check before formatting we could avoid some data loss.

 

Also, I haven't looked so I don't know, but when a drive is unmountable and the array is started, can you do a file system check without restarting in maintenance mode? I would think so, since one of the purposes of that mode is to not mount the drives so they can be checked, and an unmountable drive is... not mounted.

 

I know in the past the argument has been that it's more convenient to format a completely new array with a button right beside the start button on the Main tab, and if the disks are clear, I can't see a reason NOT to have a format button there, but I think if there are traces of a file system already in existence on the disk it makes sense to force more thought into formatting.

 

Perhaps also change the logic to only present the main tab format button if the disk has no data in the first sectors, or some other indication of no detectable file system.

 

I've also seen a person in the last week not able to set up shares because they neglected to format the drives on a fresh array, so maybe some sort of array first start wizard with steps to get people to change the name of the server, set a root password, format new drives, etc. is needed instead of relying on the main tab format button.

 

Ideas?

Reasonable idea.

 

But ... If the popup confirmation hasn't completely prevented it already, I doubt anything else would.

There's a new pop-up warning on the last rc, but I bet some will still ignore it.

 

On 11/28/2019 at 1:38 AM, johnnie.black said:

There's a new pop-up warning on the last rc, but I bet some will still ignore it.

As someone who does not work in this field for a living, I want to a say that, IMO, this warning isn't very clear. Now I'm the type that will generally read something three or four times to make sure that I understand it. So I do get this, BUT, most people will not read beyond the first two sentences, this is an unfortunate fact that I've seen from even CEOs. The very first words say Format Unmountable Disks I suspect that most people will take this as an instruction and stop reading right there because they do in fact have an unmountable disk and then they will proceed to format as per the "instructions". IMO this is not well written for the layman... maybe the first words should be DO NOT USE THIS IF...... or WE SUGGEST A FS CHECK IF....This is simply an observation from someone not in this field. Generally I do agree with the OP, as of late I've also noticed incorrect use of disk formatting among those not well versed in how parity works. Just my two cents and it's probably not worth what you've paid for it 😉

People who can't read shouldn't run servers.

My feeling is if that warning isn't enough, then nothing can save them........

What if ... on the popup box, force the users to type "DELETE MY DATA" as confirmation.