itzfantasy

New Config is a new drive layout basically. When you use this feature, the system "forgets" the drive layout (where each drive belongs), so like the info page says it's effectively like setting up a new server. The understandably confusing part is that unlike an actual new server, your drives have data in them and to make it clear, said data is not touched by this process, this is only a configuration change. From what I gather, you are probably trying to replace the drive so then it can rebuild to the new drive with the data the WDH0E9CB drive had. That being correct, New Config is not really what you are looking for since that invalidates your existing parity data. If you exhausted all the disk replacement suggestions and the drive simply refuses to be assigned to the desired slot with the existing config, New Config can be an option but you first you would manually have to transfer all the data over from the drive you are replacing to the one you are replacing it with (ensuring all the array data is present in the data drives before new parity data is calculated). Then you could do New Config, assign the drives to their previous roles (as they appear in this screenshot), start the array and it should rebuild the parity data. Of course, this assumes the old drive works.

Did you follow the documented procedures for replacing disks? https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/using-unraid-to/manage-storage/array-configuration/#replacing-disks

Well there's certainly a metric ton of read errors on Disk 1. What are the SMART stats for that drive? Have you tried a different cable?

I don't think you need to create a new array, you can replace drives on the current array as is. The approach would be to replace the parity drive first, then start replacing the data drives one by one (preferably starting with the presumably faulty drive). The issue here is that if that particular data drive keeps failing, it could fail during the parity rebuild and stop it. I would say that a good approach could be to use one of the 18TB drives as an unassigned device temporarily and back up any critical stuff there (surely it's less than 18TB). Once you manage to rebuild the parity to one of the new drives you are pretty much golden.

Are you talking about backing up the VM running the Unraid install or the data within Unraid itself?

If you want to use the physical NICs within the Unraid VM, you would have to pass them directly to the VM. This approach could cause issues because if the 4 NICs are in one card, the you would probably have to pass through the whole card and you would lose the port you use for Proxmox. That being said, every virtual NIC you assign to a VM within Proxmox has a unique MAC so you could assign as many as you want. The part I'm not understanding is why you need dedicated ports for certain containers?

Is hyperthreading enabled in the BIOS configuration?