I am planning on replacing one of my data drives with a larger data drive this weekend  immediately after my system completes it's monthly parity check.  I'm running unRAID 4.7.

 

I've read everything I could find on the forums and the wiki about doing this procedure and everything seems straightforward but I find that there are two variations to the procedure described. I suspect this is because either of them works and it doesn't matter which you do, but just to be sure, I thought I'd ask.

 

The procedure I currently plan on following is this:

 

- Capture the screen which show the current set of drives and assignments.

- Shut down the Server.

- Remove the drive and replace it with the new drive.

- Reboot. At that point the array shouldn't start. The removed disk will have a blue ball next to it and will show the serial number of the new disk.

- The Start button will be greyed out, until I check the "I'm sure I want to do this" box. After checking this box and hitting the Start button, the array will start and will begin replicating the content that was on the old disk onto the new disk and expanding the file system.

 

My question is this: in a couple of places I've seen a variation on this plan where I would unassign the old drive before powering down and removing it, and then, upon rebooting, assigning the new drive to the slot previously occupied by the old drive, before rebuilding the array.

 

My assumption is that it is not necessary to unassign the old drive and reassign the new drive, and that the procedure works fine without it. Is that correct, or is it safer in some way to unassign the old drive first?

 

Thanks.

 

 

 

Either method will work.  There is no need to un-assign the old drive prior to installing and assigning the new drive.

 

Joe L.