All my HDD are 2TB. One of my drives failed. I only have a 3TB to replace it. It wont let me replace it since it is 3TB and wants that to be the parity drive. So if I say make the parity 3TB and the other 2TB that failed ask disk one it says “Too many wrong and/or missing disks!” version 5.0B12

 

So how can I do a parity swap with this 3TB?

 

These are based on 4.x no doubt but I can only assume 5.x has the same functionality.  This is from "http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Manual#Replace_a_failed_disk"

 

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Replace a failed disk

This is the case where you have replaced a failed disk with a new disk:

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You must replace a failed disk with a disk which is as big or bigger than the original and not bigger than the parity disk. If the replacement disk is larger than your parity disk, then the system permits a special configuration change called swap-disable.

 

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.

When you start the array, the system will first copy the parity information to the new parity disk, and then reconstruct the contents of the failed disk.

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For what it is worth I have done this twice, with no trouble. I'm looking for a screen shot that shows what to expect (in 4.x at least). 

Another thing to note here is that you are less concerned with physical swapping than you are with virtual swapping as I recall.  That is, of course you pull the "bad" 2TB and then you put the new 3TB in its place.  There is no need, unless you want to for physical organization reasons, for you to actually plug the 3TB drive into the 2TB parity slot, and then physically place the 2TB parity into the old bad 2TB slot.

 

All you need to do is correctly assign them in the device page of unRaid.  So regardless of the physical connections, make sure you assign the old 2TB parity drive as Disk X and the new 3TB drive as Parity.  Unraid should recognize the 2TB parity drive as THE parity drive you used to have, and the new 3TB drive as an empty drive and then offer you the chance to perform the swap-disable.

 

Again this is all based on 4.7, I can only hope and assume 5.x has the same feature and it should work roughly the same.

Also... the drive being replaced must have failed...  (either be missing, or marked as disabled by unRAID)  so if you are just replacing it because of bad sectors, then unplug it and start the arrray without it to get it to be disabled..  Then proceed.

 

Joe L.