Hello, I currently have 4 sata ports in my old system. All in use, I need to remove one of the data drives and replace it for a parity for backup. I believe the highlighted disk is blank because it shows no files on it. I want to change that out to a 1TB disk for parity. How do I procede with this?

TIA! (There is two images)

 

Edit - What if I just get a SATA card for more ports?

Edited December 29, 20205 yr by Jake Lowe

Tools, New Config.

 

Adding a SATA HBA would be a viable option, but if you aren't going to need to add much capacity, it would be cheaper and faster to just use larger drives. My suggestion would be to add an 8TB as parity, then when you run out of space upgrade one of the remaining 500GB with another 8TB, and you would be set for a while.

 

BTW, parity is NOT backup, it's high availability. It allows you to continue to use your server uninterrupted if a drive fails and you replace it. Parity can NOT repair corrupt or deleted files, or fix a corrupted filesystem. It only rebuilds a failed drive with exactly the content that was on it when it failed, if the content was corrupted, the rebuild will be corrupted as well. Parity also relies on ALL the remaining data drives to be read perfectly from end to end, so you must be sure all your data drives are in perfect health. Since some of your drives are over 10 years old, that may be questionable.

15 hours ago, jonathanm said:

Tools, New Config.

 

Adding a SATA HBA would be a viable option, but if you aren't going to need to add much capacity, it would be cheaper and faster to just use larger drives. My suggestion would be to add an 8TB as parity, then when you run out of space upgrade one of the remaining 500GB with another 8TB, and you would be set for a while.

 

BTW, parity is NOT backup, it's high availability. It allows you to continue to use your server uninterrupted if a drive fails and you replace it. Parity can NOT repair corrupt or deleted files, or fix a corrupted filesystem. It only rebuilds a failed drive with exactly the content that was on it when it failed, if the content was corrupted, the rebuild will be corrupted as well. Parity also relies on ALL the remaining data drives to be read perfectly from end to end, so you must be sure all your data drives are in perfect health. Since some of your drives are over 10 years old, that may be questionable.

What If I add a 1tb drive in spot of the 500G WD - I dont really have the bugget to upgrade or get new disks.

 

If I did that how safe would my data be? I have my server on a UPS and it is setup to avoid a power outage that may cause corruption. 

Thankyou for your help!

You can do what you originally proposed by

16 hours ago, jonathanm said:

Tools, New Config.

31 minutes ago, Jake Lowe said:

how safe would my data be?

No matter what you do parity is not a backup.

 

53 minutes ago, Jake Lowe said:

If I did that how safe would my data be?

As safe as your last full backup. Given all you've said here, you would be better off copying anything important to you onto your spare drives and keep them away from the server. Parity depends on the health of all the drives, not just the parity drive, so you would be better covered as far as data loss is concerned by concentrating on keeping 2 up to date copies, one on the server for immediate access, and 1 on your spare drives for when the drives in your server quit.

 

Parity doesn't protect against data corruption or deletion, doesn't matter if it's user error or hardware.

 

Since you don't have money for more drives, using a drive for parity is a waste when you could be using it as an actual backup. As it stands right now with your screenshot, you can easily back up the entire content of your server (645GB) on to the 1TB drive you propose to use as parity.

3 hours ago, jonathanm said:

As safe as your last full backup. Given all you've said here, you would be better off copying anything important to you onto your spare drives and keep them away from the server. Parity depends on the health of all the drives, not just the parity drive, so you would be better covered as far as data loss is concerned by concentrating on keeping 2 up to date copies, one on the server for immediate access, and 1 on your spare drives for when the drives in your server quit.

 

Parity doesn't protect against data corruption or deletion, doesn't matter if it's user error or hardware.

 

Since you don't have money for more drives, using a drive for parity is a waste when you could be using it as an actual backup. As it stands right now with your screenshot, you can easily back up the entire content of your server (645GB) on to the 1TB drive you propose to use as parity.

Hmmmm. Good Idea. Is there a plugin that could do that for me or is there an easy way to automate this?

 

 

Is there maybe a different server OS that would work better for me. 

Thankyou again!