Hello,

 

I'm about to perform my first upgrade since building my unraid server. I'm going to have to do a parity swap because my new drive is bigger than my current parity drive. Hope I don't screw up!

 

I read that you're supposed to preclear a new drive before adding it to the array. The issue I have is that my server only has four drive bays, and they're all full. And I don't really want to take my array offline for the many, many hours a preclearance might take. What would you suggest?

 

Option 1: Skip the preclear. Is this ill-advised? My new drive is a brand new WD Red Pro, so I'm inclined to trust it. But those sound like famous last words lol. How often do infant mortalities happen in NAS drives?

 

Option 2: Preclear in Windows (or a VM). I have a spare bay in my desktop PC. Is this an option?

 

Option 3: Preclear in unraid with the new drive (or potentially the old one) hanging bayless out the side of the server. This seems likely to CAUSE a mechanical failure lol...

 

Option 4: ? ? ? Something else?

 

What would you do?

Thanks so much in advance for your ideas and opinions!

Edited June 10, 20215 yr by mrkvchm
Mark as solved

Preclear is not needed, but it's not bad practice to test a new disk, you can do that on a different computer by running for example an extended SMART test or the manufacturer testing tool.

I would just go with option 3 and place it safely on your desk or on an old mousepad or similar if you are worried about vibrations. Well worth doing a preclear even though its not technically needed - much better to find faults with a new drive prior to it being added to your array and loaded up with all that lovely data.

Thanks for the comments!

 

I ended up going with option 3. I moved the disk I plan to replace to an unsecure (but flat) location in the case so the array can keep running. I don't have any big plans for that disk so it doesn't matter if it runs for a while in a less-than-ideal location. Then I was able to put the new disk in its bay and begin preclearing it while the array continues running. Then I should be able to do my parity swap and take the old drive from its shelf once it's decommissioned. All with fairly little downtime! Neat!