Hi. I have broken array with only parity drive active, data drive was dead, so I precleared 2 new 2TB HDD, one for parity and other for data, the question is how can I copy all my files from array (parity drive) without adding new drive to array or maybe I can unassign parity drive and then make new array and copy data from old parity which would be outside array but inside unraid (copy from one drive to another in unraid machine, no usb hdd or lan as a copy chain). Is it possible?

 

I know that I can just add precleared drive in current array and it automatically resync from parity, then unassign parity drive and assign new hdd for parity slot. But I want to make new clean array and don't worry about problems that can be brought from old array.

As I understand it, you cannot copy files from the parity disk as it is not formatted the same as the data disks.  I think your only option is to rebuild the data disk based on the parity information you have.  Then if you wish, replace the parity disk for one of the new ones you have.

 

(You could aways mirror the parity disk onto the new precleared disk first - but then you'd only be adding another (unnecessary) step into the process, and would be using the exact same parity information.)

The parity drive contains no data at all, none whatsoever.  It works in concert with the data drives to be able to rebuild any one missing data drive.  With the existing parity drive, you can assign a replacement drive into the position of the previous data drive, then rebuild the array, and the contents of the previous data drive will be rebuilt onto the replacement data drive.  For more info on how parity works, please see the "How does parity work?" FAQ entry (rather old though).