wildwolf

Thanks again, Jonathan & trurl. This has indeed speed up the process. I can't seem to find the "yes I'm sure" checkbox anywhere, but so far, everything seems to be working smoothly. Sorry - that's in the "Replacing a Data Drive" unRAID wiki: https://wiki.unraid.net/Replacing_a_Data_Drive I have noticed a small discrepancy in some (very little, a key word or two) of the text in the wikis, but made my way through it. I am almost done, and I'm sure someone more experienced might have done all this faster. I do have more questions, though. Currently, I'm sitting here: P1 14TB P2 14TB D1 14TB D2 14TB D3 8TB D4 8TB D5 (removed) D6 (removed) D7 (removed) D8 8TB D9 8TB I have 2x SAS9211 cards. Card 1 has 2x SFF8087-4SATA cables. I can't look right now, but I believe: 1st cable has 4 drives (1 of which is parity) 1nd cable has 2 drives Card 2 has 1x SFF8087-4SATA cable. 1st (only) cable has 1 drive (I think this is the other parity drive). I know for a fact that I can trace my cables to drives, look at my serial numbers, and determine which 2 drives are the 2x 14TB (and which is #1 and which is #2). I'd like to remove card 2 from the system. Hook up all 8 drives to card #1. I think (someone tell me if I'm wrong?) it would be smart to have 1st cable - probably 1st drive parity, other 3 data drives 2nd cable - probably 1st drive parity, other 3 data drives Is there a safe/easy way to do this? I understand I'll have to rebuild parity drive #2 from this thread: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/54221-reorder-disks/ Is it as simple as disconnecting everything, removing my 2nd card, attaching drives as I've indicated to the 8 slots that are left (in the order I choose), identify both the parity drives, and the other 6 as the data drives, and start array?

Thanks again, Jonathan & trurl. This has indeed speed up the process. I can't seem to find the "yes I'm sure" checkbox anywhere, but so far, everything seems to be working smoothly.

So, the recommended path is what? 1. Just pull both 8TB parity drives, stick in 2x 14TB drives label as parity & rebuild parity (do I need to do anything in tools new/config to do so?) 2. Once parity rebuilt, replace 2 data drives with 2 x 14TB drives, rebuild from parity? Should I do them 1 at a time? What sequence/steps should be followed to ensure no data loss? 3. Once both are done, repeat using the 2x 8TB to replace 2 5TB. 4. Move data from the final 3 to the other drives. 5. Once done, set new config again and rebuild parity 1 last time with the down to 8 drives? I guess I'm not familiar/am unsure about how to just pull a drive & drop in a bigger one & still maintain all the data. Let me go find some more documentation. Thanks for suggestions. I'd still be interested in answers to my original 1 - 4 questions to see when/where in the process steps are changed/corrected back to 'normal' process.

Good morning. The past couple days I followed the shrink array docs here https://wiki.unraid.net/Shrink_array (clear drive then remove drive method), to use unbalance to move contents from 1 drive (disk 7 of 11 with 2 parity drives) and scatter it to a few of the other drives. I have a lot of array restructuring* I want to do, and this was a 1st attempt to see if I have the process down. I think I was mostly successful, with some user/novice errors, and I'd like to question what to do to see if I can make the next iterations better. * = I have 2 parity drives & 9 data drives and I would like to reduce my 9 data drives to 6 so I can utilize only 1 SAS card instead of the 2 I'm currently using. I had (in order of Parity --> Data1-9), p1 8TB p2 8 d1 5 d2 5 d3 5 d4 5 d5 5 d6 5 d7 5 d8 8 d9 8. I removed disk #7, as it was the least full. My misunderstanding/problems (self-inflicted) started after I completed step 16. I know it was recommended to do a parity check. I started one, and decided instead I wanted to remove the drive, so I stopped array, powered down, and removed it. After it started back up, the configuration showed my drive 7 as unassigned - should I have re-ordered assignments when I did Tools then New Config? I started to do a parity check then, but noticed it was stating that drive 7 was emulated. Didn't think that was what I needed to see - since I didn't want that drive in the array at all? I also noticed I hadn't yet changed all my shares to use "all drives" as the instructions had asked to remove the 'removal drive' from all shares on step 1. So, in a panic, I selected Tools then New Config again, reset the drive assignments back to how they were (no #7 after removal), and forgot to check parity is valid, so now my parity is rebuilding for p1 & p2 drives. I'm assuming (since all my data still appears intact, that I should be fine, I'll just have disks d1 - d6, then d8 & d9 in my array when complete. I've got a few more drives to do this with, and then upgrade to some larger drives (lots of WAIT time coming up again). I guess my questions are now: 1. When finishing step 14 & 15, do I reassign the drives to the new slots then? 2. To get the array using sequential # slots again, after this parity rebuild is complete, can I just stop array and rearrange assignments to ignore the #7 no drive slot? 3. When in the process would I modify all the shares again to use any missing drive I removed from shares? 4. Step 4 of instructions have us turn on reconstruct write, when do we change that back (and I didn't capture what it was, like an idiot, so what do we change it back to? I have 4 new 14TB drives I plan to incorporate into this mix. I will eventually be replacing p1 & p2 with 14TB drives, re-using those old parity drives as new data drives replacing 2 of the remaining 4 5TB drives, and repeating the shrink array process by removing the remaining 3x 5TB drives. The array, when I'm done (hours, and hours, and HOURS of data moves later...), should like like: p1 14TB p2 14TB d1 14TB d2 14TB d3 8TB d4 8TB d5 8TB d6 8TB (eventually shrinking from 9 data drives to 6, but increasing array size from 51TB to 60TB). I've got about 11 hours before the parity rebuild is complete. I'm sure I will take the slow road to get there, but as long as I keep the data intact (and hopefully with less errors like where I am currently rebuilding parity), I'll be fine with the lost time.

Hey everyone. I currently have 2x SAS9211-8i cards connecting 11 drives (2x parity, 9x data). This takes up my 2 x8 pcie slots, and forces my 3rd pcie slot to run at x1. I'm wondering if there exists a card that would allow me to hook up all my drives on 1 card, freeing up the 2nd x8 slot for the device I have in the 3rd slot - allowing it more bandwidth. Any recommendations?