So, hopefully I explain this properly.

 

I am upgrading my system with 2 new 16tb drives. But I'm at capacity for physical drives, so I'm swapping out 2 old 4tb drives.

 

1 of the 16tb will get added to create 2nd parity drive.

The other 16tb will go in the array.

 

What's my best way to go about doing it? Currently emptying the 2 x 4tb drives. But then what?

 

I'm thinking

Remove the drives > recreate config > add the new drives > pre-clear while rebuilding the single parity > add new drives

 

Or should I do the clear-me script as well?

Do you already have a 16TB (or larger) drive in parity1?   If not then you would not be able to add the other 16TB drive as data dtive as all parity drives must be at least as large as the largest data dtive.

Yes, already got another 16tb for parity_1

 

Just trying to figure put the best way to go about this. Dont fancy spending 10 days doing things in the wrong order

Edited December 20, 20241 yr by 7hr08ik

Preclear both new drives first, you can use USB to pre-clear if you don't have enough slots and you can swap while the server is running.

If you already unbalanced the 2 4TB drive and zero'd them, then just removed both and add 1 pre-cleared drive and check/sync parity, then add the other drive as parity2.

 

 

 

Edited December 20, 20241 yr by foo_fighter

So I dont have the new drives pre-cleared yet. I dont have USB cages so yeah. But this is the procedure I'm following;

 

Empty Old drives

Shutdown and replace drives
Power on, recreate config without old drives
Pre-clear while rebuilding the single parity
Add new drives to array

An external USB dual dock is very handy.

 

Your procedure will work, if you zero'd the 4TB drives, you shouldn't need to re-create parity. You can just check it to make sure it's still valid after you remove them, then pre clear the 2 drives and do the same thing, verify parity is still valid. Parity should stay valid the whole time.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 21, 20241 yr by foo_fighter

An external would make a few things easier.

 

4tb drives have now been emptied. Physically swapped.

 

Started the array, made a new config without them. They were disk 3/4 just shuffled things up so my new 16tb will be at the bottom, and then everything will still be in size order, and my mind can be happy. Ok!

 

The 2 new ones are in pre-clear, there is a parity-sync happening too. They'll both take about a day more to complete. Then I can just add the new parity_2 and the extra 16tb to the array.

 

I'm going to let it do whatever it wants in regards to parity checks. Not gonna skip any