I did a search and could not find a answer to my specific problem. My data drives are serial drives and my parity is connected to the parllel port. I bought a larger serial drive which I need to assign as the new parity drive. I have no more serial ports available so I must use one of these slots for my new serial drive. Can I use the management utility to switch the function of the EIDE parity drive and the serial data drive. Once I can get my parity drive on a serial port I think I can take it from there. Any feedback would be appreciated

There is no way to "switch" the functions and have all the data end up in the correct spots automatically.

 

You could

 

1. un-assign the existing IDE parity drive

 

2. Assign it as a DATA drive.

 

Press "Restore"   and then start the array.  It will start without ANY parity protection at all.  It should format the IDE drive that used to be the parity drive.

 

Next, copy the files from the OLD SATA drive you wish to remove from the array to the IDE drive (the old parity drive, now formatted as a data drive)

 

Now, once the old smaller SATA drive has had the files copied off it, stop the array, plug in the new LARGE SATA drive you want to use for parity in its place, and assign it as parity, leaving the array with one less data drive.

 

Now, Press "restore" once more and start the array once more.  You should have the LARGE parity drive in place, the smaler SATA drive disconnected, and the old IDE parity drive now holding data.

 

While you are doing this, you will not have any parity protection, therefore, before you do anything, I strongly recommend a full parity check.  That way, all the blocks on the existing disks are exercised and the smart features of the disk can help detect troubles before you do the massive data swapping without parity protection.

 

Joe L.

Thanks, Joe for the quick reply. If I understand your instructions correctly this is what I should do: Re-assign the parity drive as a data drive which will leave me with three data drives and no parity drive. After the formatting of the old parity drive is complete I copy all the data from one of the serial drives to the newly formatted drive to save the data. Then I remove the serial drive and replace it with the new larger drive and assign it as the parity drive.

 

This makes sense and seems logical (after it was explained). I don’t want to be redundant, but I want to make sure I follow you instructions correctly.

 

You ended your reply with the truncated  response “You can then” . Was there something else you were going to state?

 

Thanks again!

 

Thanks, Joe for the quick reply. If I understand your instructions correctly this is what I should do: Re-assign the parity drive as a data drive which will leave me with three data drives and no parity drive. After the formatting of the old parity drive is complete I copy all the data from one of the serial drives to the newly formatted drive to save the data. Then I remove the serial drive and replace it with the new larger drive and assign it as the parity drive.

 

This makes sense and seems logical (after it was explained). I don’t want to be redundant, but I want to make sure I follow you instructions correctly.

It sounds like you understand.

You ended your reply with the truncated  response “You can then” . Was there something else you were going to state?

Oops... trash left over from editing... (it was off screen and I did not realize it was still there)