Hi,

I have some trouble with replacing a data drive. trouble begins when I got 2 refurbished seagate 14 tb hdds cheap. One disk became parity, the other data disk. After ~6 Months the data disk is about to die and produces more error messages than the gui can handle. Unfortunately there are no cheap 14tb hdd anymore and the replacement is probably take some time, so i had to bleed and buy a new WD 14 TB.

When assigning the new WD 14 TB, I get the error, that the parity (seagate 14 TB) is not the biggest disk anymore.

So I installed a 8 TB HDD instead, but got the error that the new disk must be the same size or bigger than the old one. I do not know the actual usage of the replaced 14 tb drive and just hoped I might have been below 8 TB.

I figure, that I can not swap the parity, since 1 data drive is currently missing. So what can I do at this point?

If it`s important, all drives are encrypted and there are some additional 4 tb data drives.

The story has shaken my confidence in the 14tb parity disk (even there have been no errors yet) and i want to produce as few write and read operations as possible. Would it be possible to copy the parity disk with a 1 to 1 copy to the new disk and use it within unraid without rebuild?

Attach Diagnostics ZIP to your NEXT post in this thread.

Checking all the Infos, I realized, that I had 2x 12 tb Seagate, not 14tb. That explains the error when the wd 14 tb replacement for the data drive wasn't accepted.

I have a new 14 tb & 8 tb hdd on my hands now, whats the smartest move to get the array back up and running and add one more parity?

server-diagnostics-20250616-1030.7z

Do you still have all the original disks? Please put all the original disks back exactly as they were, start the array, and post Diagnostics ZIP (not 7z)

No, the defective disk is gone.

Can you start the array if you put all the other disks back exactly as they were?