hi,

if i setup unraid without a parity drive (for the moment) - do i still need to clear the drives i am adding to the new array? i am thinking about switching back to unraid but don't want to do the data shuffle with all my existing drives (all in xfs).

 

so tldr: new setup, no parity for now, add drives with existing data, skip clearing?, add parity drive later and establish parity.

Edited January 1, 20224 yr by sluggathor
missed a word

You never need to actually pre-clear any drive.  If the drive isn't precleared, then Unraid will automatically clear it when adding it as a new drive to a parity protected array

 

Without a parity drive (or on a new config and assigning a parity drive), Unraid will not automatically clear any new additional drive

 

1 hour ago, Squid said:

You never need to actually pre-clear any drive.  If the drive isn't precleared, then Unraid will automatically clear it when adding it as a new drive to a parity protected array

 

Without a parity drive (or on a new config and assigning a parity drive), Unraid will not automatically clear any new additional drive

 

if i understand you correctly i woud have to do a big data shuffle when adding new disks? adding existing disks in a vm (pre-formatted as xfs) will give me the unmountable: unsupported partition layout error. my existing disks are all xfs and about 75% full of data. i think i might get the same error when trying with them.

i read somewhere that unraid partitions disks from sector 64 onwards and that might be the reason for the error since all my drives start at 0

 

and another thing just to clarify for me: if i somehow manage to add my disks to a new and unprotected array i could later add a parity drive without losing any existing data? (ofc if nothing fails beforehand)

Edited January 2, 20224 yr by sluggathor

If the partition layout doesn't match what Unraid expects, then yes the drive will come up as unmountable when adding to the array.

1 hour ago, sluggathor said:

and another thing just to clarify for me: if i somehow manage to add my disks to a new and unprotected array i could later add a parity drive without losing any existing data? (ofc if nothing fails beforehand)

Yes

is there any way i could modify the existing drives partiton layout to match what unraid expects without losing the data on the drives or moving it about a bunch?

1 hour ago, sluggathor said:

is there any way i could modify the existing drives partiton layout to match what unraid expects without losing the data on the drives or moving it about a bunch?

Not that I know of unfortunately