Hi,

I have a 6 disk (including parity) unRaid array, currently running unRaid 4.7.  Two of the disks are 1TB WD10EADS and the rest are smaller 320GB drives.

 

The array is full to nearly capacity so I intend to replace the parity with a 2TB drive and one of the 320GB with a 1TB drive. I hdparm-ed the two 1TB disks and saw that they both have 512 log/phys sector size.

 

My questions are: -

Can I safely replace the drives (one by one first parity then data) and not face Advanced Format data loss conflicts?

Will the new disks be formatted as AF drives?

 

I appreciate your help, thanks

 

Hi,

I have a 6 disk (including parity) unRaid array, currently running unRaid 4.7.  Two of the disks are 1TB WD10EADS and the rest are smaller 320GB drives.

 

The array is full to nearly capacity so I intend to replace the parity with a 2TB drive and one of the 320GB with a 1TB drive. I hdparm-ed the two 1TB disks and saw that they both have 512 log/phys sector size.

makes no difference.  I would not be surprised if the so-called advanced format drives say the exact same thing.

 

My questions are: -

Can I safely replace the drives (one by one first parity then data) and not face Advanced Format data loss conflicts?

Yes

Will the new disks be formatted as AF drives?

They will be "partitioned" as you have specified in your setup preferences.

( Setup link on web-interface, then look in the "Disk-Settings" section for "Default-partition-format"

Set it to MBR-4k-aligned. )

 

Do not confuse the disk formatting with the size of the physical disk sectors on the disk, they have nothing to do wit each other)  The issue is if the partition start is on a 4k boundary or not.  One disk, the WD EARS drive, did not do well in some tests if not partitioned on a 4k boundary.    Every other manufacturer seemed to have no issue, regardless of the partition start.  However, ALL DISKS work well on a 4k alignment, so you should just set that as your default-preference and proceed.

 

There is no such thing as a "Advanced Format data loss conflict"  (Unless you partitioned and formatted one way, then repartitioned later without moving the data)

 

Many people have used either alignment, even with the WD EARS drives... the performance difference did not affect their use of the server for serving movies, music, etc.

I appreciate your help, thanks

 

If you preclear the disks (and you should) either use the "-A" option, or, set the system default to 4k-alligned and do not specify an alternative on the preclear command line.

 

Joe L.

Thanks Joe for the this clear explanation