How to Replace a bad drive with a larger drive. Larger than Parity.

[SamHill]

I have a 2TB drive that failed and needs to be replaced.

My Parity and all drives are 2TB each.

I just bought 2 new 4TB drives, with the belief that I need to replace the bad data drive, and your parity needs to match the largest drive you have.

How do I go about replacing the bad drive?

Thanks.

[trurl]

https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Storage_Management#Parity_Swap

[SamHill]

So it seems I update the Parity first, then the data drive.

I wasnt sure, since my bad drive is disabled.

Thanks.

[trurl]

2 minutes ago, SamHill said:

So it seems I update the Parity first, then the data drive.

I wasnt sure, since my bad drive is disabled.

Thanks.

Doesn't sound like you read the link carefully enough. Try again to describe exactly what you think you need to do because what you said there isn't what that link is telling you to do.

[trurl]

4 minutes ago, SamHill said:

So it seems I update the Parity first, then the data drive.

I wasnt sure, since my bad drive is disabled.

Thanks.

And, in fact, it won't allow you to replace single parity when you already have a disabled disk. That is why I linked to the parity swap procedure.

[SamHill]

Current system:

2TB - Parity 

2TB - Disk 1 Data

2TB - Disk 2 Data

2TB - Disk 3 Data (disabled due to failure)

2TB - Disk 4 Data

 

Goal:

I want to replace Disk 3 with a 4TB drive.

 

I bought (2) 4TB drives.

One to replace the failed drive

The other I believe I need to upgrade the parity to match the 4TB size.

 

Hopefully that makes more sense.

Thanks for the help.

 

Edited October 14, 2021 by SamHill
misspelled word

[trurl]

You can't upgrade disk3 to 4TB until you have a parity disk at least that large. You can't upgrade parity when you already have a disabled data disk. This is exactly the situation the parity swap procedure was designed for.

[SamHill]

So I need to do the Parity swap to the larger new 4TB  drive.

Once that is done, I can replace the disabled 2TB drive with the other new 4TB drive.

 

Is that correct?

[trurl]

Parity swap copies parity to the new larger disk, then rebuilds the disabled data disk to the old parity disk. After that rebuild completes it won't be disabled anymore, but you could replace it and rebuild to that other new disk if you want.

[SamHill]

Got the process going correctly. Your link above was exactly what I needed. Had to read it a few times to get comfortable with the process, but it is in the copy parity info stage at the moment.

Thanks again for the help in this situation. Much appreciated.