Remove several empty disks from the array at once?

[eribob]

Hi! 
I wonder if there is a quick way to achieve the following: 

 

- I had an array of 3x4TB disks + 1x2TB. The parity was 8TB.

- I bought 2x18TB disks with the idea to transform the array to be 18TB parity and 18+8TB for data (to increase space from 14 to 26TB and reduce the number of drives from 5 to 3, as this allows me to remove my HBA card to free up a pci-e slot). 
 

I already replaced the parity drive with an 18TB drive and added the second 18TB drive to the array. 
 

I am now using the unbalance plugin to move all data on the array to the 18TB drive so that the three 4TB and the 2TB drives will be empty. 
 

When all data is moved, do I need to remove the smaller drives one by one, or can I remove all 4 of them at once and create a new config? Or will removing more than one drive at a time increase the risk of data loss? All the drives that I am removing will be empty. 
 

Thank you! 
Erik

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, eribob said:

When all data is moved, do I need to remove the smaller drives one by one, or can I remove all 4 of them at once and create a new config? Or will removing more than one drive at a time increase the risk of data loss? All the drives that I am removing will be empty. 

If you go the New Config route you can remove them all at once as after going this route you will be rebuilding parity to get your array back into a protected state.  You are unprotected until that finishes.  

 

An alternative process in the first place would have been to use New Config to both remove the old drives and add the new drives at the same time before copying/moving any files and then rebuild parity based on the new set.  You could then have mounted the old drives one at a time via the Unassigned Devices plugin to copy their contents back to the array.  This would have been the fastest approach although you would then not be protected against one of the old drives failing before you copied their data back to the array.

 

If you want to remain protected all the time then you need to remove them one at a time.

 

[eribob]

Big thank you for the quick reply. I will make a new config and cross my fingers that the brand new seagate exos drive does not fail! I have cloud backup… 

 

/Erik