Hello all, been an Unraid user for many years and haven't screwed up too many times, but I am stumped this time.

History: Bought a 26TB drive to upgrade my parity from 20TB and had planned to move the parity to a data drive. I am limited by the number of hard drive cables I have and could not just add the new 26TB to the array. So, I knew I would be upgrading an old 8TB with the 20TB when it became a data drive. So, I stopped the array and unassigned my oldest 8TB drive. Then I shut down and removed the 8TB and inserted the 26TB. When it restarted I assigned the new 26TB to be my parity drive and the 20TB I made a data drive. I had Copy button, as indicated on this document (https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/storage-management/#parity-swap). I chose Yes I want to do this and hit Copy.

Here's where I screwed up. After taking about 1 day of copying and only 67% complete, I got impatient because my array had been down for so long and I wanted my services back up. I also realized I should have started with just swapping out the parity drive by itself and not worried yet about removing the 8TB. I should have followed this document first: https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/storage-management/#upgrading-parity-disks Soooo, I cancelled the copy stopped the array. I re-assigned my 20TB back to be Parity disk. Then I shut down and removed the 26TB and put back the original 8TB (which of course still has all the data on it). When I rebooted I then realized I could not just add back the 8TB to the array because it wants to re-format the drive prior to adding it to the array.

Current Situation/Issue: I started the array without the 8TB assigned to it's data location but with the original 20TB parity added back. Array started but for Docker I'm getting "Docker service failed to start" also "Libvrt service failed to start". Under Settings>Docker it says my Docker vDisk location "Path does not exist", same for my Libvrt locations. The only option I saw was to do a Check of my Disks. So, right now a "Read-check is in progress" that says it will take 2.5 days. So, now I'm still waiting for my Docker services to start back up and I don't even know if it will be successful when this is complete.

If anyone could help me get back up and running from my screw up I would be so appreciative! I am attaching my Diagnostics also.

tower-diagnostics-20250824-1131.zip

Edited August 24, 2025Aug 24 by heelphan

You can do a new config (tools - new config), then reassign the old data drive and new parity, start array to begin parity sync and when the new parity finishes syncing, you can upgrade old data disk, this assumes all drives are currently healthy.

So the new config worked, thanks very much. I have now swapped in the new 26TB drive and it is building back parity.