Preclearing/Deleting Backups

I still haven't received all my parts to build my first unRaid server but I had a couple questions.

1) How many times should I preclear my hard drives? I've read it's better to preclear a hard drive more than once.

2) After transferring my data to my unRaid server, how long should I wait before I delete my original files or remove hard drives so I can add to my unRaid server?

There was a recent poll on this:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12616.msg119971#msg119971

I usually do two cycles, so far I've found 3 drives that died in the first cycle and none that have died in the second cycle (or in use after being precleared).

Regards,

Stephen

1. see above.

2. when you're comfortable with unraid and that your data is stable. that's a question you know best. i say transfer it over. make sure you're data is good.

pull the source drives after you feel good. label them and set them aside. forget about them for a bit. you have a 4224. you have plenty of drive bays. if you need more space today, buy a drive or two more.

If your unraid is still running in 2 weeks or 2 months from now. is 100% stable and you need the drives, do a parity check. if it passes, then put them in your unraid.

I guess the answer is when you run out of money for more drives or you are running low on drive bays or you are 100% confident in your new server. you always need more drives! so buying  some extras or having some extras on a shelf is not a waste.

**Again, this is just my theory and not some rule. my data is valuable to me and hard to replace (if i can at all). I'll take my time and go slow.

I'm filling my 4224 unraid box with drives from a migration i did last September. I have a pile of 16 2 TB drives from a 2008r2 raid migration that i had on my shelf.

I'm still in testing it myself. I am going to play with a bit , test scripts, put data on it, test permissions, test expanding the array, pull a drive and test rebuilding to a new drive., etc. get my feet wet with unraid before I completely go live. then I'll build a test  unraid box from an old workstation or server or a VM. test new stuff on that before i put it on the production box.

**At work,  when we can, we have test boxes run for a month or longer before moving them to production. the whole time is it is being synced with  the  data on the production servers. nothing is worse then a live box die.

After  it goes "live", we tend to keep the old box (or at least the drives) for a month in the rack and up  to a year in storage before decommissioning it.

Thank you both for your replies.

Looks like I'll do at least 2 preclears maybe 3. And hopefully it won't take more then 2-3 weeks for me to get comfortable with unRaid.

Thank you both for your replies.

 

Looks like I'll do at least 2 preclears maybe 3. And hopefully it won't take more then 2-3 weeks for me to get comfortable with unRaid.

3 preclears could take 5+ days, so you'll have time to play around with unRAID.