I have an array of 4 disks: a 14tb parity and 4tb, 12tb, and 14tb data. My 4tb drive is old and has been showing a SMART error for a while. Being cheap and lazy, I figured I would just replace it with a larger drive once it failed. Unfortunately, the 12tb drive popped a SMART error and then failed within a week. I am getting a new drive to replace the 12tb (probably 14tb), but I'm worried that when I go through the rebuild process the 4tb drive is going to fail and I'd be risking data loss.

 

Is there a good procedure for handling this situation? I read the parity swap procedure and while I didn't entirely understand it, I thought it might work since I would want to swap the current 14tb parity into the array and use the new disk for parity if at all possible. Ideally, I'd like to get a larger drive for parity than I currently have, use the current parity to replace the failed 12tb, and replace the 4tb as well. I am happy to take the time to do multiple rebuilds to accomplish this. I'm just not sure what the best way to proceed is while limiting my chances of losing my data.

tower-diagnostics-20240125-1937.zip

Parity swap can't help in this case, 4TB disk should be OK, you can run an extended SMART test to confirm.

16 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Parity swap can't help in this case, 4TB disk should be OK, you can run an extended SMART test to confirm.

But I can't swap the 4tb drive until I replace the failed 12tb right? Replacing individual drives is not a problem and something I've done before. I'm worried about the 4tb drive failing during the 12tb replacement party build.

1 hour ago, brainyyak said:

But I can't swap the 4tb drive until I replace the failed 12tb right?

Correct.

 

18 hours ago, JorgeB said:

4TB disk should be OK, you can run an extended SMART test to confirm.