I know that unRaid doesn't support the encryption of existing partitions without data loss, but I'm wondering, if there any reason why I couldn't remove a drive, use Ubuntu to encrypt the partition then, reinstall it in my array? 

 

 

From a quick google I'm not seeing a way to encrypt in place using Ubuntu, but I may be missing it. There is a very high likelyhood if you do get it converted that the resulting disk wouldn't mount in Unraid, and even if it did you would have to rebuild parity, putting the rest of your data at risk if you have a drive failure.

 

Perhaps you could try it on a small drive with unimportant test data? Ideally just set up a test rig with a trial version of Unraid and do all your experiments there.

 

As a side note, if you do use encryption, make SURE your backups are complete and kept up to date, as encryption removes almost all data recovery options. If an encrypted disk fails to mount properly for pretty much any reason, the easiest recovery is going to be format and copy from backup.