Moving data from an emulated disk to shrink the array

[Die_piggy]

Long story short, I just moved home and found an old 8TB drive which had been in a pc on extremely light duties. I ran a 2 pass check and everything looked good so I added it to my array. A couple of days later, I came back to hear the dredded clicking and the array being downgraded and the 'new' drive emulated. This was about 4 days ago, I have been away from home since, so only 

getting around to sorting something out now. 

 

My parity drive is currently 12TB, and the replacement drive I have ordered is 16. The emulated drive only has 50 odd GB of data stored on it, mostly Linux files. Worst case I can redownload what's on it. 

 

What's my best course of action? Can I move the data off the emulated disk and shrink the array before replacing my parity drive? Or is there a better idea which I haven't thought of? How would I go about emptying the emulated drive, can unbalance achieve this? 

 

Thanks in advance for the help

 

[Die_piggy]

I should mention I would rather not have the array unavailable for a couple of days if I can avoid it (ie don't want to do the parity swap procedure outlined here if possible https://wiki.unraid.net/The_parity_swap_procedure)

[Die_piggy]

Noone?

[trurl]

16 hours ago, Die_piggy said:

Can I move the data off the emulated disk and shrink the array before replacing my parity drive?

yes

16 hours ago, Die_piggy said:

How would I go about emptying the emulated drive, can unbalance achieve this? 

yes

[trurl]

Shrinking the array requires rebuilding parity so if you can do that on the new parity drive it would be more efficient.

[Die_piggy]

got it. So this should be the proceedure:

 

1. Move data off emulated drive,

2. Bring Array offline

3. Replace Parity drive

4. Shrink array

5. Rebuild parity

6. Add old parity drive into array

 

Sound right?

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, Die_piggy said:

got it. So this should be the proceedure:

 

1. Move data off emulated drive,

2. Bring Array offline

3. Replace Parity drive

4. Shrink array

5. Rebuild parity

6. Add old parity drive into array

 

Sound right?

 

Since you are starting by getting the data off the emulated drive, then a faster set of steps would be:

2.  Stop array

3. Plugin in new drive

4. Boot the system and make sure array is not started.

5. Use the New Config  tool to reset the array.  Use the option to keep all assignments  (not compulsory but minimises chance of error)

6. Return to Main tab and assign new parity drive, and also old parity drive to array (probably to replace removed drive).   Make any other changes to array drives you might want such as re-order them

7.  Start array to commit new assignments and build parity based on the current set of array drives

8. Format old parity drive to make it usable (it will start off unmountable).   This only takes a minute or so and can be done while the parity rebuild is in progress.

 

this avoids the lengthy clear process that would take place in your original step 6.

[Die_piggy]

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