So, I am going to replace an ancient 1.5tb drive with a precleared 4tb drive.  Seems pretty basic as I have watched the Spaceinvader One video several times.  The question I have is more related to drive order in the array.

 

I have a very large case with 3 in 1 5.25 drive bays and only 4 array drives + parity + ssd cache.  If I wanted to only house 2 drives in each rack for increased airflow, would I need to make sure the drives are in the array in serial number order regardless of controller port?  I think the proper thing to do is to stop the array, shutdown the system, move the drives around to where I want them, restart the system and run new config to get the drives back in the proper order on the new sata ports.  I know that I have to keep the parity drive in the parity slot, or at least make sure that the parity drive serial number always ends up in the parity slot.

 

My google fu has been failing me, I assume the SpaceInvader One has a video on just the process.  If someone wants to point me toward something please do.  I am not going to attempt a drive rearrangement until I have the 1.5tb replaced and the second 1.5 tb drive migrated to the new drive as well and removed from the array.

 

I am running 6.11.5

Unraid does not care how or where drives are connected sp physically moving them around in the case will not affect the order in the Unraid GUI.

So given the table below, if i rearrange the drive physically... when I boot back up Unraid will just put them in the right order?  That just does not make sense to me.  So, it tracks the serial number to assign the slot and it really is that transparent?  Years ago when I built the machine and cabled the 3x2 5.25 racks, I assumed that the racks were top down and they are actually bottom up so my OCD has driven me nuts for years as the top drive is not sda followed by sdb, sdc, sdd and so on. 

 

But, you are telling me that I can just reorder them and let the chips hit the floor and it will figure it all out?  Why have I waited so long to fix this?  I just want my slots and controller ports to line up 1:1.

 

So, just shut down, reorder and reboot?

 

Edited June 11, 20233 yr by mattw

Yes - you can simply reorder the physical drives to match the GUI and reboot and the order in the GUI will stay unchanged.

So, will I need to do a new config, or just reorder in the slot assignments and bring the array up?

Unraid assigns the disks based on the drive's serial number.

 

You assigned Disk 1 to 9VS5AGSW

You assigned Disk 2 to 9VS59YHL

 

It does not matter if you physically move the drives or switch the controller cables from one connector on the motherboard (or even install a new controller and connect the drive to that).  9VS5AGSW will still be assigned Disk 1 and 9VS59YHL assigned Disk 2.