I have a situation where a 2TB data drive has died and is no longer under warranty.  I currently also have a 2TB parity drive.  I have 2 new 3TB drives.  I'd like to be able to replace the 2TB data drive, and rebuild from parity on only 2TB of the 3TB capacity.  Once that's done replace the parity drive with 3TB drive and after rebuilding parity, blow away and rebuild the data drive on all 3TB. 

 

Is there a way to do this?  If I put the 3TB data drive in, it won't let me select it and start the array obviously because it's bigger than the parity drive.  Is there something I can do from CLI to fool it into thinking it's 2TB?

 

Is there a better way to accomplish what I am trying to do?

 

Thanks.

 

PS - I'm running 5.0 beta 12 I think

 

Assign the 3T drive as parity and the parity as the dead drive. Unraid should perform a party-swap. Although, the latest release includes an fix for this procedure.

Thanks for the reply.  So are you saying I shouldn't do this unless I'm on the latest release, or the latest release would prevent me from doing it?

 

I think I'm going to copy the contents of the failed drive to an external drive just in case.  I can always rebuild parity from the drives left, add the drive and then copy contents back over if it goes sideways.

The process is called "swap-disabled"  and is used in exactly your situation.

 

Prerequisite  you must have one data disk disabled (and you do if the indicator is "red".)  If you do not have it "red", unplug the failed drive and start the array without it, then stop the array.  It will be "red"

 

Then, stop the array, power down if needed to install the drives, power up.

assign the current 2TB parity drive to the slot that has the failed drive.

Assign the new 3TB drive to the parity slot.

 

The wording should now indicate a parity swap procedure is taking place and the contents of the parity drive will be copied from the old parity drive to the new.

While this is happening, the array will be off-line.  It will probably take 4 or 5 hours.

Then, the array will start and the old parity drive will be re-constructed with a copy of what the failed data drive was, reconstructed from parity and all the other data drives.

 

Apparently there is a bug in some earlier version of unRAID where the process did not make sure the parity drive had a proper partition.  The latest version fixes that.  You might want to upgrade first to be more comfortable.  (your beta-12 version is about 10 versions old)

 

Joe L.

 

Thanks very much...the parity swap is currently in process and so far everything looks good.  I wish I'd known to search 'parity swap' because the threads I've looked at since I started this one would have taken care of it.  Anyway, thanks for a great product and for helpful replies.