Hello there!

 

Still getting the hang of Unraid, so I have a lot of questions. I try to find answers before posting, but some answers seem older and may no longer apply to the latest versions of unraid. I also have a very particular situation that I am not sure how to handle. 

 

Here is the context: I currently have 1 x 22TB parity drive with 1 x 22TB, 2 x 16TB, and 1 x 14TB data drives. I am in the process of preclearing 1 x 22TB drive and 1 x 20TB drive. All my drives are hotswappable; I was happy to see that Unassigned Devices saw them as soon as I inserted them into the empty bays and I was able to preclear them without restarting the whole machine.

 

Here is what I would like to do: 

1. Add the 22TB drive as a second parity drive
2. Replace the 14TB data drive with the new 20TB drive

 

Can I perform these operation in a single step? I would think I would do so in the following manner:

 

1. Stop the array (after the preclear operations are done)
2. Add the second parity drive
3. Drop the 14TB (by setting it to "No Device")
4. Add the 20TB drive into the slot liberated by the 14TB drive Replace the 14TB drive with the 20TB drive
5. Start the array

 

Is it as simple as that? Will this actually work? Or does the parity need to rebuild first when adding a second parity drive? 

 

Thanks for any advice!

 

Regards,

 

Dhomas

Edited March 11, 20242 yr by dhomas
Clarity based on reply

Simple as that, except no need to set slot to no device. Just select the new device in that slot.

 

I prefer to reserve the verb "add" for situations where you are actually adding a disk to a new slot that didn't already have a disk assigned. Parity2, for example, in your case, but could be used when talking about a new data slot. What you are doing with the data disk is "replace".

14 hours ago, trurl said:

Simple as that, except no need to set slot to no device. Just select the new device in that slot.

 

I prefer to reserve the verb "add" for situations where you are actually adding a disk to a new slot that didn't already have a disk assigned. Parity2, for example, in your case, but could be used when talking about a new data slot. What you are doing with the data disk is "replace".

Thank you for the advice and clarifications. I will try this today and mark your post as a solutions after successfully applying it.

13 minutes ago, dhomas said:

Thank you for the advice and clarifications. I will try this today and mark your post as a solutions after successfully applying it.

I just performed the operation. Parity is being rebuilt on the newly added parity drive. The replaced disk is being reconstructed. All in parallel. It worked better than I expected! Thanks again!

I have a similar case, but only my system was built in 2010 with total 8 disks. With currently one parity drive of 6TB and seven data drives of various capacities, I wish to convert the system to two parity drives and six data drives. Can I take out one data drive and replace with a drive of same size of the current parity drive as the new second parity drive, all in one step?

 

1. Stop the array

2. Take out one data disk

3. Add a new 6TB disk in the slot just vacated and assign it as the second parity drive

4. Start the array

 

The 6.12.13 OS should first clear the new drive so I assume that I do not need to first preclear it, am I right?

 

Thanks! 

 

 

Better if you talk about "slots" in the same way Unraid does. So the vacated slot would still be a data slot. And parity2 is the parity2 slot. I prefer "bay" when talking about physical locations in the case.

 

Unclear what you intend to do about the data in the vacated slot.

Probably a few ways to go about this.

1. I would first take a pic of your main (drives) tab for reference.

2. Do something with your data on the drive about to be removed.

3. Then remove that data drive you don't want in the array anymore.

4. Then do a new config keeping your original parity drive and adding the second parity.  (There are some check boxes you need to preserve data on the array drives and caches if I recall... Be sure you understand those before proceeding.)

Set all your remaining data drives as the array.

 

3 hours ago, trurl said:

Unclear what you intend to do about the data in the vacated slot.

What are the ways to move all the data of the disk to be removed to other disks prior to removing it from array?

 

3 hours ago, Veah said:

Probably a few ways to go about this.

1. I would first take a pic of your main (drives) tab for reference.

Here is the screenshot of the main:

 

(I made a screenshot but was unable to attach it here! 😓)

 

Thank you all for your help!

 

Assuming you have space on the rest of your array, you can move your data from disk to disk manually or if lazy like me, use the Unbalanced plugin.

On 9/12/2024 at 12:48 AM, Veah said:

Assuming you have space on the rest of your array, you can move your data from disk to disk manually or if lazy like me, use the Unbalanced plugin.

Thanks! But what are the differences of "Move" function in Main and the unbalanced web UI where we may also move files?

Move in the Main tab invokes the mover.  It will move files around as per your parameters.  Typically this is moving files from a cache to array.

Using Unbalance Scatter function to get all your data off of a certain drive and spread among the rest will easily clear the drive you want to remove. 

 

24 minutes ago, Veah said:

Move in the Main tab invokes the mover.  It will move files around as per your parameters.  Typically this is moving files from a cache to array.

Using Unbalance Scatter function to get all your data off of a certain drive and spread among the rest will easily clear the drive you want to remove. 

Thank you very much for your help, Veah!

13 hours ago, Veah said:

will easily clear the drive you want to remove

This needs to be clarified. It will NOT clear the drive, parity must still be resynced after the drive is removed. It will empty the drive of files, but that is very different than clearing the drive.