Forgot to Preclear but ran WD Data Lifeguard

[Mlatx]

Hi All,

 

I decided to pull the trigger on Unraid instead of going with Synology.  I hope I made the right decision.  I ran my 3 harddrives through WD Data Liefeguard.  I did the 5 step process and all was good.  Well I forgot to preclear them, and they are now part of an array.  Do I need to or should I run preclear as well?  Would I need to delete the array and start from scratch (not data is on it)?  I would appreciate any feedback on what the best approach is.  Thanks.

[Squid]

Without the "signature" indicating the drive has been precleared, you either need to run preclear again, or simply add the drive to the array and have unRaid "clear" it.  The latter will be faster (but still hours).

[Mlatx]

Thanks.  i scratched the existing array and am in the process of preclearing. 

[itimpi]

Pre-clearing is never a requirement - it is only worth doing if you want to do a confidence check on a drive before adding it to an already existing parity protected array.

 

the OP message sounds like a new array where the disks have already been tested.   If that is true then the easiest thing is to just create the array and then let the unRAID format the drives and build parity.   Preclearing the drives in such a scenario adds no value.