Hi,

So plenty of discussions and good documentation on how to upgrade a parity disk to a larger one, but not so much around downgrading to a smaller drive.

Is there anything specific to know? Or am I safe to follow the standard documentation for upgrading a parity disk?

For some context, I have a 22 TB refurbished disk that I'm returning since it's under warranty and it developed a SMART error after only 2 months of uptime. There's a much better deal on an 18 TB disk that I snagged so I would like to use that as my parity instead. My 3 other disk are all 1 TB or less.

Edited August 13, 20241 yr by mobilemountain

Standard replace will work.

 

Why do you want such a large parity disk when all but the first 1TB will be unused? Parity only needs to be equal or larger than any one of the data disks.

Thank you for the reply!

I'm just doing some future proofing with the large parity disks. Those 1 TB disks are all from old gaming PCs that I've put into my first NAS as I was tinkering and building out my rig. They will be replaced in the next few months with some more 18 TB disks! 

38 minutes ago, mobilemountain said:

Those 1 TB disks are all from old gaming PCs that I've put into my first NAS as I was tinkering

Keep in mind that parity holds none of your data, in order to rebuild a failed disk all the other disks (parity + data) must be read perfectly from end to end.

 

If you have a second drive failure while rebuilding a drive, you will lose the data on both failed drives. Make sure all your data drives are perfect, replace any that show signs of failure.