Hi, I have an array with 28 plus 2 parity drives. These are old 3TB drives and I would like to completely replace the array with 10 20TB drives for peace of mind since some of the 3TB drives are over 10 years old.

What is the best way to do that? The articles I have read all talk about replacing the drives one by one, but I think that would require 30 new drives? I don’t need the added capacity and figured 10 20TB drives will be sufficient for a very long time.

Thank you

One option would be to replace the first 10 drives, then move all the data from the remaining 3TB disks to the new disks, in the end do a new config without it and resync parity. You could also do all the moving without parity and only add it in the end, depending on your risk tolerance/backup scenario.

I see…thank you. That might be too risky for me since I’m also not very experienced with how UnRAID works. If it all fits, maybe I can copy the data to 5 of the new drives, remove the existing array and then create a new one with the 5 unused drives, move the data to the new array, and then add the other 5 drives to the array.

So there’s not a way to have two concurrent arrays in a single UnRAID box? If there is a trial period for UnRAID, would I be able to build a new box, create an array with all 10 drives, copy the data over, remove the old drives and array from the old UnRAID box, install the new drives in it and then “import” the new array? Is there such a thing as “importing” an array?

Edited August 19, 2025Aug 19 by Hammer8

10 hours ago, Hammer8 said:

o there’s not a way to have two concurrent arrays in a single UnRAID box?

Not yet.

10 hours ago, Hammer8 said:

If there is a trial period for UnRAID, would I be able to build a new box, create an array with all 10 drives, copy the data over, remove the old drives and array from the old UnRAID box, install the new drives in it and then “import” the new array? Is there such a thing as “importing” an array?

Yes.

Thank you!