Hi, I'm still quite new to NAS devices so I hope my post makes sense.
I had a 5-drive unRAID setup which was running completely fine. I then had to move overseas and sell my old system. I've since set up a new personal computer and want to do 2 things:
1. Verify that my drives aren't broken from me transporting them overseas
2. Downsize my 5-drive system to a 4-drive system (so I don't need to carry so many drives the next time I move overseas again)
However, my current setup is a small-form-factor PC with a motherboard with only 4 SATA ports. I have no way of connecting my 5th drive in the setup.
My setup had 1 single 4TB parity drive, the other 4 are 4TB data drives. I want to remove some of the 4TB drives and replace them with fewer 8TB drives. (I have not labelled any of the drives so I'm not sure which is the parity and which are data drives.)
Do I necessarily need unRAID to check if my drives have failed? I heard unRAID doesn't "stripe" my files across drives, does that mean I can just connect a data drive to my Windows PC and view its contents?
I also read that in order to remove a drive, you must first copy the data away from that drive. Does that mean I need to connect 2 data drives to my Windows PC, then move the contents of 1 data drive to the other data drive?
Thank you for reading, let me know if any clarification is needed.