Moving Data Off 2Tb, Replacing With 1Tb

[Veilus]

Hi,

 

I have a slight problem, my unraid box has six disks in total. Parity, Disk 1, Disk 2 are 2TB hard drives. Disk 3, 4 and 5 are 1tb.

 

Disk 2 looks like its going to fail soon, so i would like to remove it and just have 5 hard drives running. The problem is how do i replace that 2tb drive with a 1tb drive. It even has 1.3tb of data on it, yet i dont know how to move that data to the smaller drives.

 

Is it just a matter of looking whats on the drive and moving stuff over manually?

[abs0lut.zer0]

i had the same problem, what i did was used midnight commander in a telnet session to move the data from failing drive to other drives  and then i used the following post http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ#On_version_4.5.4_of_unRAID_onward (assuming your version of unRAID is higher than 4.5.4 AND you TRUST your data is okay as it kills the parity READ CAREFULLY) and then added another drive.

[daniel.boone]

2 choices

 

Enable disk shares and use windows to move from on disk to another. It's slower than the next method but it's usually easier and safer for most. You can install Teracopy to make this process easier. I'm no fan of those copy utilities. Do a total size and file check once it's complete.   

 

Other option is to open a console on the unRaid server and use the move command. Issue here is usually folks are not to comfortable with the shell. Using move incorrectly can delete your data. You can try the copy and remove but it makes the process more involved and the risk around remove is the similar as move.

 

I don't want to discourage you using the shell. Just be careful. Linux commands are well documented and easy to use. The reality is Windows can be just as unforgiving.

[WeeboTech]

You can install Teracopy to make this process easier. I'm no fan of those copy utilities.

 

What's nice about Teracopy is you can enable test mode which will do the copy/move then test the files on the destination by reading them back. The CRC/Checksum is compared which insures you copied over what was read.

 

The other nice feature is it will check disk space on the destination before moving and if you do not have enough it will warn you.

[WeeboTech]

After you move your data, post a smartctl report.

You may be able to resurrect the drive with badblocks in destructive write mode.

if not, you may be able to get it to fail 100% so that any vendor diagnostics will show it as failed.

[daniel.boone]

Another copy utility I've used is RichCopy. It's an updated robocopy from M$ that is suprise...for free. I find it faster than Teracopy but that might be my mind playing tricks on me. It has some options that I found very useful so it's replaced Teracopy. 

 

In my office I do replace the file servers every few years so I'm very familiar with backup and restore processes as well as bulk copy of server data over the network. In this environment one missing file is too much. These utilities as good as they might seem do miss things on occasion. It never hurts to check before and after.

[abs0lut.zer0]

After you move your data, post a smartctl report.

You may be able to resurrect the drive with badblocks in destructive write mode.

if not, you may be able to get it to fail 100% so that any vendor diagnostics will show it as failed.

 

like the new avatar weebo

 

please explain your post here how would one accomplish these 2 things with badblocks..

 

thanks

[WeeboTech]

After you move your data, then remove the drive from the array and recalculate parity.

 

Take a smartctl snapshot

mkdir -p /boot/logs

smartctl -a /dev/disk/by-id/xxxxxxxxxxxxx > /boot/logs/smartctl.start (or whatever you want to name it)

where xxxxxxxxxxx is the identifier of the drive.

 

Then download badblocks from my googlecode site.

 

http://code.google.com/p/unraid-weebotech/downloads/list

 

the command is then

badblocks-1.42 -sv -w -o /boot/logs/badblocks.out /dev/disk/by-id/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

Be careful about the drive you select!!!!! It will blindly overwrite the disk. There is no recovery if you made a mistake.

This will do 4 destructive write tests of 0xaa, 0x55, 0xff, 0x00 (which is equivalent, but better, to a 4 pass preclear).

 

Examine /boot/logs/badblocks.out to see if bad blocks were detected.

 

Then do a final smartctl log and compare the results.

 

smartctl -a /dev/disk/by-id/xxxxxxxxxxxxx >  /boot/logs/smartctl.end

diff /boot/logs/smartctl.start /boot/logs/smartctl.end

 

you can also do a smartctl -t long /dev/disk/by-id/xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Wait the appropriate time (I think it's 5 hours for a 2TB drive).

Then dump the smartctl log again and compare.

[Veilus]

Thanks for the replies guys its been very helpful, about those fixes, would that fix my hard drive which is making a clicking noise? (probably wouldnt anyway)

[WeeboTech]

Thanks for the replies guys its been very helpful, about those fixes, would that fix my hard drive which is making a clicking noise? (probably wouldnt anyway)

 

if it's audible, it's not just a surface problem.  RMA it.

[Veilus]

I seem to have another problem, i enabled disk 2 and moved off all my data. Yet now when i removed the disk, disk 2 says not installed, but i can still access disk2 contents?? Did i backed up and removed the wrong drive? I checked all other drives and its set to "yes (hidden) for export. Drive 1 has the main content so should Drive 2. Drive 3 and 4 are empty and drive 6 has one folder thats only allowed on disk 6.

 

The hard drive is removed physically.

[abs0lut.zer0]

i am trying to understand what you did, you say you

copied off all the data on the bad disk to other disks?

what is the steps you took after that because if i am understanding you correctly you have not told unRAID yet that the disk is gone and one of the BRILLIANT features of unRAID is to act as if the missing disk is still there via the parity information.

[Veilus]

Oh i never knew unraid could do that, thats pretty cool. I havent actually told unraid to remove it yet. Just wanted to check if i moved the contents off on the right drive. Since im sending it in for rma should i just tell unraid to remove it or just leave it as it is? i will be putting it back in.

[daniel.boone]

Right now unRaid thinks your drive as failed so it's rebuilding the missing drive in memory. If another drive then has issues you'd have 2 failed drives. That means you'd lose data. Better to tell unRaid the drive is gone so you can be protected. To verify the copied data compare the Disk shares not the User shares.

[abs0lut.zer0]

Right now unRaid thinks your drive as failed so it's rebuilding the missing drive in memoryoff the parity drive. If another drive then has issues you'd have 2 failed drives. That means you'd lose data. Better to tell unRaid the drive is gone so you can be protected. To verify the copied data compare the Disk shares not the User shares.

 

agreed, do you really want to take the chance....

if another drive fails now you will occur data loss!!!!!

[WeeboTech]

Are you planning to wait for the RMA'ed drive or are you purchasing a new one?

 

If you are purchasing a new one and it's on it's way, I might wait.

If you are planning to wait for the return of the RMA, I would move the data, remove the failed drive and recreate parity.

 

[Veilus]

Alright i better do that then, since im waiting for the new hdd.