August 3, 201114 yr I could have sworn I found this once, but I can't remember, and I've exhausted my search... Running 5.0b10, if I have already replaced my 2TB parity drive with a 3TB, and the old one is just hanging out, do I need to preclear it again to add it to the array with no down time? I'm sure this has been answered before, I just can't find it! Thanks!
August 3, 201114 yr I could have sworn I found this once, but I can't remember, and I've exhausted my search... Running 5.0b10, if I have already replaced my 2TB parity drive with a 3TB, and the old one is just hanging out, do I need to preclear it again to add it to the array with no down time? I'm sure this has been answered before, I just can't find it! Thanks! yes, to add an additional drive to a parity protected array, it can be precleared or not precleared. If it does not have a valid preclear signature, unRAID will zero it keeping the array off-line until it is completely written (a 6 or more hour process for a 2TB drive) If you want no down-time, you must pre-clear the drive again. (it does not have a valid preclear signature, nor is it all zeros)
August 3, 201114 yr Author Thanks Joe, I appreciate the quick response. Didn't want to preclear if I didn't have to! But it is worth the no down time. Thanks again!
August 4, 201114 yr You could have followed the "parity swap" procedure and done this in one step. But now that you've just replaced parity, best option would be to preclear the disk. There are options to just do the clear and omit the pre and post read. For an already precleared disk, you'd save some time.
August 4, 201114 yr There are switch options for the preclear script to only clear without doing the pre-read and post-read. They work great to perform a quick clearing of a seasoned or proven drive. They cut the time into about 1/3 compared to running it normally. Peter
August 4, 201114 yr You could have followed the "parity swap" procedure and done this in one step. But now that you've just replaced parity, best option would be to preclear the disk. There are options to just do the clear and omit the pre and post read. For an already precleared disk, you'd save some time. One step, yes, but not less time. The one time I did it it took a long time to copy parity to the new drive.... and I do not remember if the array was available while it made the copy. My gut instinct says it was not. (I think the array was off-line while the parity copy copy was performed)
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