Adding a parity drive at a later date

[afly]

Apologies if this is obvious but I'm yet to receive my kit to delve into unRaid and would prefer to get a plan together now

 

I'll be starting out with just a single solitary 3TB drive which means a parity drive is out. When I get the cash I'll be buying two more and declaring one of those as the parity.

 

My question is whether, considering my first disk will already have data on it, I will be able to just put the 2 new ones in, declare one of them as the parity, and suffer no data loss on the first drive? I would essentially be 'importing' a drive with data on it I guess

 

Thanks

[joyless]

Yes, that's possible, I don't see any problems with doing that, although if I were You, after plugging in 2 new drives I would assign one as parity, wait for it to build and then assign second new disk as data. This probably doesn't matter though.

[afly]

Excellent stuff, thanks 

[Frank1940]

Preclear your disks before adding them to a array.  All disks will have to be cleared when added to the array and and any disks not precleared will have it done at that point.  Preclear times on a 3TB drive are more than 24 hours...