thefly Posted April 17, 2012 Share Posted April 17, 2012 I am waiting for the arrival of my raid card to add additional drives. I currently have 5 drives filling my MB to 98%. I have numerous drives waiting to be installed when my card arrives. Can I temporarily remove one drive and replace it with a new drive, formatted it, and then remove the new formatted drive and replace the full drive back? Can I then install the now formatted drive into my raid configuration when it arrives? Quote Link to comment
emagsamurai Posted April 17, 2012 Share Posted April 17, 2012 Are you planning to use hardware RAID with unRAID? I'm not sure I follow the question. If you are asking about clearing drives to be installed in an unRAID sever, then you can always use the preclear script which will not only test the drive, but also reduce the time it takes for the format process to complete (a couple of minutes for a pre cleared drive compared to hours for one that is not) once you add the drives to your array. See the wiki for an explanation on preclearing your drives. Quote Link to comment
thefly Posted April 17, 2012 Author Share Posted April 17, 2012 Sorry, I mean that I have a RAID Controller coming to expand my drive allocation. Quote Link to comment
emagsamurai Posted April 17, 2012 Share Posted April 17, 2012 Do you mean a preconfigured flash drive with unRAID? If that's the case, then you should be able to preclear any drives that you want to add once you get your new key. You just won't be able to add them to your array until you get the new license. Although, I'm not sure why you would get a preconfigured flash since you would already have a flash with your current configuration on it. I think I'm still confused about what you're trying to do. Quote Link to comment
thefly Posted April 17, 2012 Author Share Posted April 17, 2012 I have many drives sitting around waiting for my controller card to arrive. Since clearing 2tb drives takes forever, I would like to ready them for installation once I'm ready for expansion. Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted April 17, 2012 Share Posted April 17, 2012 Short answer, no, unless you have a way of adding a spare SATA port before your multi port card arrives. Long answer, yes, you can remove drives, connect blank drives, preclear them, all with the hardware you have. HOWEVER, you can't start the array and access your data while this is going on. Longer answer... you MAY be able to remove one drive, and start the array degraded and use that slot to preclear a drive, but you run a high risk of messing something up and losing data. If you have another pc with sata and usb, and a spare usb stick, why not do a temporary free install with the unraid trial version and preclear, and exercise the drives there? I don't think the reward of getting a drive precleared sooner is worth the risk of jeopardizing a running server. Quote Link to comment
lionelhutz Posted April 18, 2012 Share Posted April 18, 2012 ^^ Agreed. I would not mess with the configured array disks unless you're OK with losing data. Quote Link to comment
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