Upgrade parity with faulty data drive

[DannyG]

I have a 15 drive array. Most at 4TB (a few 2TB) I have 2 parity drives 4TB).

 

Many of my 4TB drives have been failing lately (all the same brand) and I’ve have to replace a few.

 

right now, another one of them has failed and wants to be replaced.

 

I’ve been thinking about the day where I will need to eventually upgrade the parity drives to at least 8TB if I ever need to grow my array past 52TB

 

instead of purchasing a new 4TB drive, I would like to purchase a larger drive and assign it to the parity drive and then reassign the parity drive to the data drive.

 

Questions 1: is this possible? Will it work in my current state? (Where data is being emulated due to faulty data drive)

Question2: once I replace both parity drives to larger ones, do I need to do anything additional to grow my array? Or will I now be able to feed my data drives larger disks right away?

 

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, DannyG said:

Questions 1: is this possible? Will it work in my current state? (Where data is being emulated due to faulty data drive)

Yes.   The parity swap procedure is designed for exactly this scenario.

 

1 hour ago, DannyG said:

Question2: once I replace both parity drives to larger ones, do I need to do anything additional to grow my array? Or will I now be able to feed my data drives larger disks right away?

Nothing additional as long as any new data drives are not larger than the smallest parity drive.