Failed drive shuffling question


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Sorry if this has been asked, but I’m looking for general guidance here and I’m having trouble finding the answer. I have a secondary array filled with 1TB drives, including parity. One of the drives just failed. I’m going to try restarting the array as soon as some other things finish accessing it and hope the drive comes back from the dead. If it doesn’t, I want to figure out the right way to replace/upgrade drives.

 

My plan will be to swap a 2TB in my primary array for a 4TB (or more). That’s easy. Once I have the 2TB drive, what’s the best plan for adding it to the secondary array? Do I replace the failed 1TB drive and lose the extra space? Or is there a way to replace the parity with the 2TB and move the old parity 1TB into replacing the failed 1TB? That seems to break the 2 failed disk rule, but maybe I’m misunderstanding that.

 

I also have the constraint of no more SATA ports so I can’t add another disk that way, and I’m already filled up on the array, so I can’t simply move the files off the 1TB disk. I could potentially move the files off the failed disk to the primary array but that seems like a last resort. Maybe it’s not? If that’s the right answer, I could remove the failed disk, rebuild parity, replace the parity with the 2TB, and then add the former 1TB parity like a new disk.

 

What’s the best path forward?

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Actually, a follow up question. If I replace the failed drive with a 2TB, can I upgrade the parity at a later date and then have access to the extra space on the replacement drive at that time? Or do I have to remove that larger replacement drive and add it back in so it recognizes the extra space?

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1 minute ago, Bitbass said:

Actually, a follow up question. If I replace the failed drive with a 2TB, can I upgrade the parity at a later date and then have access to the extra space on the replacement drive at that time? Or do I have to remove that larger replacement drive and add it back in so it recognizes the extra space?

No data drive can be larger than either parity drive. Ever.

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