My system consists of one 8 TB parity drive and three 4 TB data drives.  Two of the data drives (Drives 1 and 2) are nearly full.  Those drives are actively used for my videography business with the business folder share split between them.  I just bought another 8 TB drive today.

 

Which should I do?

 

Option 1 - Just add the 8 TB drive to the array and set the business share to exclude Drive 1 and 2.  If I do this and there are Premiere Pro files on Disks 1 and 2 that I'm still working on, will I have issues?

 

Option 2 - Replace Disk 1 with the new 8 TB drive, then reformat the old Disk 1 and add it back to the array.

 

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Sounds like either way you intend to end up with all those disks in the array so I would just add it.

 

Some additional thoughts on your 2 options.

 

3 minutes ago, rockbox948 said:

set the business share to exclude Drive 1 and 2.  If I do this and there are Premiere Pro files on Disks 1 and 2 that I'm still working on, will I have issues?

The user share settings control where new files get written. All disks are still included for reading the user share. It is always a good idea to not fill a drive completely though, so you might want to move some files to make some room on disk 1 and 2. This will allow existing files to get replaced with larger files, for example, and also leave some space for filesystem repair to work with if that becomes necessary.

 

6 minutes ago, rockbox948 said:

then reformat the old Disk 1 and add it back to the array

You must let Unraid format a disk AFTER adding it to the array. Unraid will clear a disk added to a new slot in an array that has valid parity so parity will remain valid. A formatted disk is not a clear disk so if you format the disk before adding it, Unraid will clear it and then it will have to be formatted again. Note that this applies whether you do option 1 or 2.

Thanks!  I'd much rather just add the drive.  Is there a specific way to keep Disks 1 and 2 from being written to any further?

Excluding it from each user share is what I would do, but if they are very full I would also move some files to other drives.

 

Also, take a look at the Minimum Free setting for each of your user shares. You should set that to larger than the largest file you expect to write to the share. It doesn't control how much space is kept free. Instead it makes Unraid decide to use another disk for writing a new file when a disk no longer has at least minimum free.

Thanks for your help!

So, if I have 400 GB left on my drive, I should set the minimum free to 500 GB to make sure a single file won't eat the rest of the drive?