My parity drive is failing, but with the RMA process it could be another couple of weeks before I get the replacement.  I'm going to pick a new drive from a local store.  My plan is to stop the array, swap the parity drive with the new drive, put the failing drive into another bay, and then start the array.  My question is should I let the parity rebuild complete before I try to clear the failing drive?  Or do I need to change my plan at all?

How do you know it is failing?

15 AUG - got the first notification "reported uncorrect is 1"

3 NOV - "reported uncorrect is 95" - had been periodically increasing

4 NOV - during parity check the disk was disabled once the "reported uncorrect" hit 429

 

I reached out to Seagate support and gave them the details and the SMART report info...about 5 minutes after I uploaded the info they said they were starting the RMA process.   

There is not much point in trying to clear the parity drive before RMA’ing it.    The contents are just a random series of bits without any meaning once the parity drive is not in the array.     They only have meaning while the drive is in the array as it requires reading the corresponding sectors off all data drives to give them any meaning.

2 hours ago, itimpi said:

There is not much point in trying to clear the parity drive before RMA’ing it.    The contents are just a random series of bits without any meaning once the parity drive is not in the array.     They only have meaning while the drive is in the array as it requires reading the corresponding sectors off all data drives to give them any meaning.

Unless you only have one data drive.

I won't worry about clearing the drive then.  I've got 3 data drives.  When the replacement drive comes in I will just add it as another data drive.  Thanks for the info!