One of the drives in my server is performing very poorly, and it's dragging the whole system down with it.  I have already manually moved all the files off of the offending drive onto other drives, so it is completely empty.  I want to remove this drive from my system, but not (yet) replace it.  Do I need to use the "new config", "new slots", or some other utility to do this?

You didn't say which version but I believe initconfig is the command you want to use. Answer with Yes. I think 5.0b6 has a button on the interface but I'm not using it and I'm not too sure if it does or not.

 

Peter

Sorry, I'm using 5.0b4.

Can I get a definite answer on this please?

If there is a button called new config then use it.

 

Peter

Can I get a definite answer on this please?

I don't think the 5.0beta4 version had the "New Config" button on the Utils tab, but if it does you can use it. I think it was first added in 5.0beta5 or beta6.

It is equivalent to the

initconfig

command types on the command line.

I do have the new config button.  It's rebuilding parity now.  Thank you for your help.

 

Out of curiosity, why does it need to rebuild the parity?  If a drive is completely empty, removing it should have no effect on parity.  Perhaps there should be a "remove empty drive" option which simply verifies that the drive is truly empty and removes it from the config without the parity rebuild?

Empty from your perspective is not the same as full of binary zeros.  When you delete a file, the file system merely marks the file as deleted.  Parity is computed on the actual disk contents, and the disk still contains the file data until it is overwritten by the next file.  If a delete actually overwrote the file areas with binary zeros, it would be much slower, and any chance of recovering a deleted file would be lost.  But even then, there are certain structures on the disk that would never be binary zeros, so removing the disk could still not be done without impacting parity.

 

Take a look at THIS POST.  Not exactly your situation, but is a pretty good example showing why you'd need to rebuild parity in order to remove a disk.  

 

Your premise that a totally zeroed disk does not affect parity is true.  Take a look HERE for a way to remove a disk without rebuilding parity.

I do have the new config button.  It's rebuilding parity now.  Thank you for your help.

 

Out of curiosity, why does it need to rebuild the parity?  If a drive is completely empty, removing it should have no effect on parity.  Perhaps there should be a "remove empty drive" option which simply verifies that the drive is truly empty and removes it from the config without the parity rebuild?

 

If any one disc in your array should fail, you can get all its data by using the parity and remaining data discs to reconstruct everything that was "lost". But that's the limit - only one disc at a time can be reconstructed using parity data.

 

If the array did not rebuild parity after removing a disc (empty or not) it would still assume you were a disc short. Due to this, the rest of your array data would never become fully protected.