Process to remove drive from array and replace with cache drive?

[johngalt]

Title says it all. I've recently converted all my drives from ReiserFS to XFS and want to add the Cache drive while I'm doing maintenance. I currently have a 15 drive server with 14 in the array and 1 for parity. Right now drive #14 is empty so I want to remove that from the array and add in a 500gb SSD for Cache.

 

I assume this will use the new config tool, but I'm not sure of what's involved. 

[JonathanM]

Yep, new config.

 

Take a screenshot of your drive assignments on the Main tab before you start, just in case things get shuffled. You will be rebuilding parity, so don't even start this unless you are sure all your disks are healthy.

 

After you apply a new config with the preserve all option, you go back to the Main tab and make your changes.

 

I'm assuming by the way you worded this that you do not have enough physical slots to have the SSD attached until you physically remove the old drive. If that's the case, you can do the new config after you power down and physically swap the drives.

 

Probably best if you set the array not to start automatically in the disks settings and then set it back after everything is happy.

[johngalt]

I finished converting all the drives to XFS (except the last one since I was shrinking the array for a cache drive). I ran a parity check before doing additional maintenance and it reported 64 errors on Disk 6. No sync errors though. I haven't had any of these for years, so is there anything I need to do other than replace Disk 6 and rebuild parity?

tower-diagnostics-20220312-0552.zip

[JorgeB]

Does appear to be a disk issue, you can run an extended test to confirm, since this type of read errors can be intermittent, if it fails the test or you get more read errors replace.

[johngalt]

I have extra drives, so I'll just go ahead and replace.