An alternative to parity rebuild to Change Half arrays' disks

[vincy_777]

Hello, I am new to Unraid and have little experience.

I have an array with 8 disks of different sizes including 2 for parity and the server is currently off. 3 of the disks are showing signs of fatigue and I want to replace 6 disks in the array (including 1 for parity) to upgrade the capacity and get ride off some tired ones.

 

I would like to know if there is a simpler way to modify the disks than to change the disks one by one and let the reconstruction take place. because I'm afraid that with the rebuild times and solicitation it will take a long time and increase the chances of one of the disks dying during the process.

 

Thank you.

V.S.

[trurl]

Attach Diagnostics to your NEXT post in this thread 

[vincy_777]

On 11/1/2023 at 11:17 AM, trurl said:

Attach Diagnostics to your NEXT post in this thread 

The server is currently offline, i will send the diagnotics as soon as i reconnect everything ( i moved ).

[Frank1940]

On 11/1/2023 at 5:02 AM, vincy_777 said:

I have an array with 8 disks of different sizes including 2 for parity and the server is currently off. 3 of the disks are showing signs of fatigue and I want to replace 6 disks in the array (including 1 for parity) to upgrade the capacity and get ride off some tired ones.

 

You are aware that both parity drives (in this situation) must equal or larger than any of the data disks.  (Said another way, the parity drives do not have to be the same size but the smaller one must still be equal to (or larger) than any data drive.)

[vincy_777]

On 11/15/2023 at 3:23 PM, Frank1940 said:

 

You are aware that both parity drives (in this situation) must equal or larger than any of the data disks.  (Said another way, the parity drives do not have to be the same size but the smaller one must still be equal to (or larger) than any data drive.)

Yes i'am. It's the case and it will be the case after the changes. Now both parity drives are 4tb disks and the arrays disks are 4tb or under. I intend to change the parity disks to 8tb both (those are disk i already have) and to upgrade all arrays' disk to 4tv each. This is why i want to now of there is an other solution to change disk in the array other than to wait on the parity rebuild for each change. I need basically to swap half the disks...

[itimpi]

It is possible to completely reset the array via Tools->New Config and calculate new parity based on the new drive set.     However that will leave you the job of copying back to the array the files from any drives that have now been removed.   You have to decide if this is less trouble than rebuilding the drives to keep their data intact.

[vincy_777]

I finally had time to work on the server again, and things have changed a bit. Two drives of the array are now set to 'unassigned,' and I don't understand what happened. I don't know what I should do now.  The diag files is attached as asked before.

cat-o-net-diagnostics-20240105-1255.zip

[JorgeB]

Post a screenshot of main, based on the diags the array looks OK.

[trurl]

I also don't see anything in those diagnostics that indicate the 2 unassigned disks were ever part of the array.

 

Do you have any older diagnostics, syslogs, or array status emails that might indicate they were?

 

Can you tell us anything else about anything that you might have done since you last posted over a month ago?

[vincy_777]

I didn't do anything; I turned the server on and off 4 or 5 times to retrieve certain information from specific disks (and I stopped the parity process that was running). Since I knew that some disks were fragile, I didn't want to risk them failing during the reconstruction. I physically dismantled the server to retrieve the position of the disks, the SATA cable numbers, etc., but I took care not to mix up the cables and to reattach each cable to its corresponding disk. Unfortunately, there were no diagnostics before this; it's my first breakdown/problem. I'm thinking of trying to connect the disks directly to my computer to see what's on them and if it's possible to recover anything, unless you have a better idea? Thanks again.

[trurl]

Can you start the array without those disks assigned and post new diagnostics?

[JorgeB]

Nothing suggests those disks were part of the array, if they were you could have flash drive issues.

[vincy_777]

i removed only one of them, but there seems to be no changes

cat-o-net-diagnostics-20240105-1934.zip

[trurl]

27 minutes ago, vincy_777 said:

i removed only one of them

Nobody suggested removing anything. Just start the array and post new diagnostics.

[vincy_777]

Sorry, I misunderstood

oh....If i mount the faulty disk ( ST2000DL003-9VT166_5YD83CHZ (sdg) and  ST2000DL003-9VT166_5YD7ZS4H (sdh) ) i can see they have files inside  and the same shares structures...so they were in the array....well i can only mount of them the other is grayed.cat-o-net-diagnostics-20240105-2011.zip. This is the log with the arrey on and the 2 not assigned.

[trurl]

UD is logging sdh can't be mounted because it is a duplicate UUID, which might be because it was in the array. Current version of UD might give a better explanation.

 

Wonder if parity is actually valid without those disks in the array?

 

On 11/1/2023 at 5:02 AM, vincy_777 said:

new to Unraid

Then why are you using such an old version of Unraid (which is preventing you from running current versions of plugins also)?

 

Are you sure you didn't New Config without those disks sometime in the last 2 months while trying to find your own solution to the title of this thread?

 

[vincy_777]

On 1/5/2024 at 11:31 PM, trurl said:

Then why are you using such an old version of Unraid (which is preventing you from running current versions of plugins also)?

Because i'am new to Unraid 🤣. I don't have much experience with Unraid/Unix systems, so it's not immediately clear to me. I don't recall why I didn't perform updates; it might be related to the server being offline for an long period.

 

Yes, it seems that sdh was an old parity disk. The actual one was swapped 'recently' (about 6 months ago), but I don't remember intentionally creating a new config without the other disk, though it's highly possible.