Downsizing number of disks

[richardsim7]

My server is currently rammed with disks, and as they spin 24/7 I'm concerned about the constant 220W+ draw

 

2x 4TB parity

16x 3TB data

(and 2x SSD cache drives, but not concerned about those)

 

I'm also running dangerously low on space (2TB free of 48TB)

 

I've bought 4x 18TB drives to replace these, for 1 parity, 3 data drives (54TB usable)

 

I've set up a temporary 2nd server to pre-clear the 18TB drives as there was no more SATA ports in the main server to do this.

 

So I want to reduce parity from 2 to 1 disk, and replace all the disks with the 4x18TB ones

What's the best way to go about this? Do I swap disks directly and let parity rebuild? Do I transfer the disk contents over the network and then swap them?

[trurl]

7 minutes ago, richardsim7 said:

they spin 24/7

Probably you have docker/VM on the array.

 

10 minutes ago, richardsim7 said:

So I want to reduce parity from 2 to 1 disk, and replace all the disks with the 4x18TB ones

What's the best way to go about this?

 

General outline

• Replace parity and remove parity2, might have to New Config to get it to forget you had a small parity2 disk, but that would be fine since you need to rebuild parity either way.
• Replace/rebuild each disk one at a time to larger disks, starting with fullest disks.
• When all new disks have been rebuilt, copy remaining disks to those larger disks.
• New Config to remove small disks and rebuild parity.

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