Replacing parity and data drive at the same time?

[Green Dragon]

Hiya!

 

I recently completed set up and testing of my first UnRaid server.  I have four 2TB drives making up the test array.  I don't have more than a few hundred MB of data on drive 1 and no data on drive 2 or drive 3.

 

I want to replace the parity drive and drive 3 with 8TB drives.  What is the most efficient way to do this?  There is no data on any of these drives that it would bother me to lose.

 

Here is what I'm thinking:

1. STOP the array
2. Replace the drives
3. PreClear both drives (concurrently)?
4. Assign the drives
5. Start the array

 

Could it be this simple?

 

I have two additional 8TB drives I will be moving off of my NAS once this task is completed and the NAS data migrated to UnRaid.

 

Thanks!

 

[itimpi]

A simpler procedure since there is no data to preserve would be:

• use the Settings->New Config tool to allow drives to be changed
• set drives as you want them
• start array to build parity based on the new drive set.
• format the new data drive to get it ready for use (could be done while parity is still building)

no need to pre-clear anything.   

[Green Dragon]

Thank you!  That sounds much easier.

 

I've read and watched many videos which indicate that new drives should be PreCleared at least once, some say multiple times.  Is this a personal decision to skip PreClearing of new drives?

Because two of these drives are new and the other two have been sitting on the shelf for a few years I've elected to PreClear all four.  Once this has completed I will perform the New Config process as you suggested.

 

Thank you!

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, Green Dragon said:

I've read and watched many videos which indicate that new drives should be PreCleared at least once, some say multiple times.  Is this a personal decision to skip PreClearing of new drives?

Pre-clearing is a personal decision, and is a good stress test of a drive before introducing it into an existing array.    However in this case the first thing you are going to do is build parity which is going to read every sector off every array drive, and write every sector on the parity drive.   If a disk is having problems I would expect you to get errors while trying to build parity so the pre-clear feels a bit superfluous.