Switching parity drive 2 to 1

[Ynitxap]

Hi,

 

I have made a boo boo I added a new bigger parity drive as parity drive 2 into my array. I now want the old parity drive 1 to become data disk 2.

 

I am not sure how to proceed. I know, I should have looked at the swapping parity article before. I did not and I feel shame for this.

 

Any pointers much appreciated. So Parity becomes disk 2 and Parity 2 becomes Parity.

 

Thank you

[itimpi]

2 hours ago, Ynitxap said:

Hi,

 

I have made a boo boo I added a new bigger parity drive as parity drive 2 into my array. I now want the old parity drive 1 to become data disk 2.

 

I am not sure how to proceed. I know, I should have looked at the swapping parity article before. I did not and I feel shame for this.

 

Any pointers much appreciated. So Parity becomes disk 2 and Parity 2 becomes Parity.

 

Thank you

 

Unraid is quite happy to run with parity2 present and no parity1.

 

You can stop the array; unassign the parity1 drive; assign it to be disk2; and start the array.  This will cause Unraid to initiate a Clear of disk2 (the old parity drive) and when it is completed you can the format the drive in preparation to using it.

 

Note that you cannot move the parity2 drive to the parity1 slot without rebuilding its contents as the two parity slots use different calculations.

[Ynitxap]

Thank you @itimpi. @jcofer555 guided me throught the process on Discord. I know have my Parity2 as Parity ❤️

 

It involved bringing down the array a couple of times and re-formatting the Disk2 drive from xfs to btrfs and back to xfs. The core is this first step though:

 

jcofer555

"Take a screenshot of the layout your have currently do a tools > new config and then go to the main page and reassign the disks how you want them and then let parity rebuild"

[JonathanM]

1 hour ago, Ynitxap said:

tools > new config and then go to the main page and reassign the disks how you want them and then let parity rebuild

That was unnecessary, if you had followed itimpi's steps parity would have remained valid.

[jcofer555]

parity 2 requires disks to be in the exact same order for parity to remain valid but yes he could have had parity remain valid but it would have been stuck in parity 2 slot adding those restrictions.

also thankfully it's only a 6tb drive so parity will re-sync withing roughly 10 hours

Edited February 15 by jcofer555
additional info

[Ynitxap]

21 hours ago, JonathanM said:

That was unnecessary, if you had followed itimpi's steps parity would have remained valid.

As @jcofer555 explained, my goal was to not have the drive "stuck" in Parity2. So really thankful he was handholding me through the process. Didn't even know about the other restrictions, that would have sucked to find out a month later that I can't change the order of the data disks without rebuilding. So he provided a much better solution