I am replacing 2 6TB drives with 2 new 18TB drives.  I currently have a single 12TB parity drive.

 

What is the best way to do this with minimal array downtime?

 

I would really like to avoid a parity swap which would probably take a day and a half at the rate the preclear on the 18TB drives is going.

 

I'm fine with being without redundancy temporarily (while parity is rebuilt) as everything important is backed up.  I also can temporarily have all drives connected at the same time although the end state will have the 2 6TB drives removed.

 

Running unRAID 6.10.0-rc2

Edited January 27, 20224 yr by brentdog

35 minutes ago, brentdog said:

I am replacing 2 6TB drives with 2 new 18TB drives.  I currently have a single 12TB parity drive.

Unclear if you understand this, so I'll just say it. You can't have 18TB data drives with a 12TB parity.

 

So, I'll outline what is possible with the drives you listed.

1. Replace parity with one of the new 18TB, rebuild parity and do a subsequent parity check.

2. Rebuild one of the 6TB drives with the old 12TB parity drive, do a non-correcting parity check.

3. Rebuild the other 6TB drive with the other new 18TB drive, do a non-correcting parity check.

 

39 minutes ago, brentdog said:

 

What is the best way to do this with minimal array downtime?

What I've outlined keeps the array data shares and applications available the entire time, albeit at reduced performance which is unavoidable.

 

If at any point there are errors, those need to be resolved before moving on to the next step.

Thanks @JonathanM.

 

Yeah I understood that one of my 18TB would have to be the new parity drive which is why I pointed out that current parity was 12TB and that I wanted to avoid a parity swap, but I should have been more explicit.😀

 

I'll report back when complete.