How to best move drives around?

[TDD]

Hello!

 

In the absence of posting screen shots, i'll do my best to explain my goal here.

 

I have a 9 disk array.  Disk 2 has recently become suspect with errors as reported on the status screen.  This unit is a Seagate 750G.

 

I now have a replacement Seagate 2TB drive ready for the swap.  The data on the suspect drive has been moved to another location just to be safe so it does not matter if it really rebuilds or not.

 

Anyways...my parity disk, a WD 2TB EADS is, from what I can tell spec-wise, slower than the new 2TB drive coming into the array...a Seagate 5900 RPM unit.

 

Believing that one should have their fastest drive as parity, I would like to:

 

1) Make the WD 2TB parity disk the replacement for the failed Seagate 750G, and

2) Place the new Seagate 2TB drive into the parity position.

 

Said new Seagate 2TB is getting a torture test now via the preclear script.

 

I don't believe I can do both at once, so my steps would be...

 

a) Disconnect dead drive

b) "Restore" and redo parity, effectively removing the disk from the array

c) Connect new 2TB drive and reassign parity to this unit

d) Redo parity

e) Add what was the old 2TB parity disk back into the logical slot that was the dead 750G

f) Redo parity...and done.

 

Is there a shorter way?  Am I overdoing this?

 

Thx!

 

Kevin.

[ohlwiler]

UnRAID allows a special procedure called "swap-disable" to be performed. Read about it here:

 

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Manual#Replace_a_failed_disk

 

For swap-disable, you use your existing parity disk to replace the failed disk, and you install your new big disk as the parity disk:

 

  1. Stop the array.

  2. Power down the unit.

  3. Replace the parity hard disk with a new bigger one.

  4. Replace the failed hard disk with you old parity disk.

  5. Power up the unit.

  6. Start the array

[TDD]

I thought as much, so thanks for the verification.

 

The parity-swap worked as expected and I am back online again.

 

Kev.