My array was working great until I decided to replace a 300GB PATA drive with a 400GB PATA drive. Now that the array is back up it looks like the 400GB drive has problems. So I'd like to just put the untouched 300GB drive back and forget the upgrade.

 

My question - do I remove the 400GB drive , replace it with the original 300GB unit and hit restore? Or is there another procedure that i need to follow so that I don't lose any of the data that was in the array prior to the upgrade?

 

paul

 

I don't think you can restore to smaller drive. Because way that parity works it generates drive from parity. Meaning you need to have atleast same size drive as the broken one. And that's sector size must be same or bigger. Example if you have two 500GB drives one of the drives could have more sectors than the other one.

I don't think you can restore to smaller drive. Because way that parity works it generates drive from parity. Meaning you need to have atleast same size drive as the broken one. And that's sector size must be same or bigger. Example if you have two 500GB drives one of the drives could have more sectors than the other one.

If the 300 gig drive was working when you removed it from the array AND If the 300 gig drive has not been written to since you removed it from the array you could remove the new 400 gig drive, replace it with the old 300 gig drive and then check the little checkbox and initialize the array from the disk contents.  In other words, rebuild parity based on the contents of the 300 gig drive instead of restoring from the existing parity and data drives.

 

If you had removed the 300 gig drive because it had failed, then you will need to find another 400 gig (or larger) to replace the existing 400 gig.

 

Joe L.

 

 

Thanks guys! The 300 GB drive is prisitine and works fine so I'll take Joe L's advice.

 

paul