So I can do the following, INSTEAD of re-precleaing my parity and main drive:

 

You can do the following after you copy your data to another drive;

Set to 4k Aligned on the options page.

Stop the array.

Unassign the parity drive. On the deviced page make note of the device ID, it will appear as sda or sdb or hda etc.

Run the command "dd if=/dev/zero count=8 of=/dev/sdX" - replace sdX with the device ID from the last step.

Reassign the parity drive.

Go back to the main page and it should indicate it will build parity so start the array and let it complete.

Perform a parity check and ensure the check completes without errors.

Repeat the above with the data drive.

 

Do I run the "dd if=" command in telnet?

 

And this will do EXACTLY the same thing as doing an -A preclear, except it will take much quicker?

 

SO:

 

1.  Upgrade to 4.7 final/stable

2.  Install new hd(bnib)

3.  Format using the -A preclear

4.  Assign/format the disk in unraid

5.  Copy all the data over to the new disk(that has been advanced formatted)

6.  Do the steps up above to make the previous 2 rives(main+parity) the same as the new one, ie starting on sector 64.

 

Is this it?  My 2 previous drives(parity+main) are both 2tb ears, both have been precleared with 4.6, I don't know if there is a jumper, whatever came stock is how it goes.  I've been reading the changelog and it says if its been precleared with the jumpers on, to NOT do the -A preclear?

Maybe I just don't get it, but wouldn't the easiest way to proceed be to just put the jumper on and forget it? Then you can run any version of unRAID and you don't have to worry about any of this "MBR-4k-align" formatting. Or is there some big advantage to using the MBR-4k-align format that I don't know about?

 

Should Samsung F4 drives also be formatted MBR-4k-align?

If a WD drive is already installed without the jumper then the easy path is to move the partition using the new advanced formatting.

 

No-one knows exactly what the Samsung or Seagate drives do internally but it's probably the best formatting method for both. There have been some very good Samsung write speeds reported with the old formatting.

 

Peter

If a WD drive is already installed without the jumper then the easy path is to move the partition using the new advanced formatting.

I just added two WD20EARS drives to my array. If I leave the jumpers on, then unRAID will not boot....period. If I remove the jumpers, then unRAID boots just fine. I am formatting the drives using the MBR-4k-align format, but formatting is MUCH slower than it is with the normal format. Am I doing the right thing or should these drives be formatted using the normal format since they don't seem to be exhibiting the typical EARS behavior?

 

unRAID ver. 4.7

no cache or parity drive installed as yet