OK, this is possibly a weird question, so let me try to explain what I want to do.  I'm currently building an unRAID server that, when finished, will have 5 data drives and 1 parity drive.  I currently have 3 hard drives and I'm waiting on (crappy) APO shipping to deliver the final three hard drives to me.  Should've been here by now but that's a whole other issue.  The drives are in a Fractal Design Define Mini which has 6 hard drive trays.

 

The hard drives I have now are currently installed in hard drive trays 1, 4, and 6, and are labeled as such.  They're also plugged in to SATA ports 1, 4, and 6 on my motherboard as well.  But they're recognized as drives sda, sdb, and sdc by unRAID because no other drives are currently present.

 

If I build my array now, is it going to confuse things when I add my final three hard drives?  Are drives 4 and 6 going to become drives sdd and sdf, breaking my array?

 

My reason for the weird order, by the way, is that prior to going the unRAID route, I had 4 hard drives installed on a Vista box, and they were just individually shared out.  I had then spaced out evenly in trays 1, 3, 4, and 6 to maximize the airflow they were getting from my case's front fans.  The drives in tray 1 and 3 are being upgraded to bigger drives.  Basically I went from:

 

1:  1 TB

3:  1 TB

4:  2 TB

6:  2 TB

 

to:

 

1:  2 TB

4:  2 TB

6:  2 TB

 

Should I just relabel the three drives I have now and put them together in my first hard drive cage, and add the rest later?

 

And a second unrelated question:  is there any way to build an array of three data disks now, and just finalize the setup with a parity disk once I have the rest of my hard drives?  I'm not too worried about doing this because my three current drives are all error free, and the data I'm going to store on them is currently backed up in another location anyway.  Obviously when the server is fully finished, I'll have a parity drive.

Hey, Daggah

 

I'm kage on the NASIOC board. Small world!

 

I'll try to handle your questions in the order asked:

 

It's important to know which drive you assign to which disk number. It's somewhat important to know which disk is assigned to which port. It's ONLY vital for the parity drive. Everything else can pretty much be corrected for by the system. You must always know where your parity drive is.

 

You can absolutely wait until you have all your other ducks in a row (and all data copied) before assigning a parity drive. Since you have your data backed up, the redundancy isn't that important right now, and the extra copying speed should be beneficial.

 

UnRAID doesn't really care what order your disks are in, or what ports they are assigned to. As long as their arrangement makes sense for you, and you can reproduce it when needed. It's helpful to periodically take a screen shot of your disk assignments for reference in this sort of case.

The disks can be assigned a different identifier (sdx) on every boot. It's really all according to what disk spins up and reports the fastest.

 

Sent from my HTC Vivid

The disks can be assigned a different identifier (sdx) on every boot. It's really all according to what disk spins up and reports the fastest.

 

Sent from my HTC Vivid

Exactly. DO NOT get hung up on the specific device sdX linux device name assigned.  Instead, keep track of the disk model/serial number.  As mentioned earlier, the device can change from one boot to another as disks initialize in a different order. (as one spins up faster than another)

 

You did not mention what version of unRAID you are running.  The new beta versions internally use  model/serial number when assigning disks in the array.    As you move disks in the hardware the newer beta versions will use the model/serial number of the disks to figure it all out regardless of where you plug in the disks. (as long as they are all present) 

 

The older beta versions and the 4.X series and prior will figure it out on its own if you keep the disks on the same set of disk controller ports.  If you connect them to different (previously unused) ports you'll just need to use the disk assignment page to re-assign them before you can start the array.

I'm using unRAID 5.  Thanks for the replies everyone.