Hey all, apologies for what is probably a dumb and many times discussed issue but I just want to ensure I get it write and dont bork my array.

One of my 4TB data drives is on its way out and has been triggering alerts for a little while now, I've been holding off doing anything (as I was hoping the HDD prices would come down) as the error counts were low but they have started to pick up.

I've read a few guides on how to remove a drive but im still not clear and there seems to be multiple ways, its a 4TB drive and I have around 6TB free in the array so I would like to just remove it and redistribute the data on it across the other drives (2 x 10TB and 1 x 4TB with a 10TB parity).

Can someone assist me so that I don't mess this up, just want to remove the failing drive and then ill expand the array when prices come back down as for a new 10TB its basically double what I paid for them last time and I cant justify it!

Thanks

loki-diagnostics-20260613-0917.zip

You can first try to move the data to other disks; you can use the mover to empty the disk (as described here): https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/using-unraid-to/manage-storage/file-systems/#converting-to-a-new-file-system-type

After that's done, you need to shrink the array, there are two options, 1st one is typically the recommended way, requiring a parity sync:

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/using-unraid-to/manage-storage/array/removing-disks-from-array/#removing-data-disks