Hi all,

 

Firstly, i have some background info located in this post here : http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=31500.0

 

 

I wanted to ask if the following migration / reconfiguration of disks is going to be possible. Here is a quick summary of how things are currently setup in my N54L (running 6 drives):

 

 

As you can see i have FIVE 4tb drives and ONE 2tb drive.

 

 

As part of the expansion I want to reconfigure some drives and the shares. Here is what i was thinking to do (take note of the serial numbers to keep track of which disk is going where!)

 

 

 

So the jist of it is that I want to replace the current disk3 and disk4 with two new 4tb disks to expand SHARE1 I want these disks physically housed in the N54L. The 'old' disk3 and disk4 move over to the N36L housing and become disk 6 and disk7 respectively.

 

So am i correct in thinking I can achieve this by following these steps:

 

1) Perform parity check on array

2) Take array offline and un-assign disk3 and disk4

3) Perform all the hardware changes and physical movement of drives

4) Fire up unraid and at the drive configuration screen:

(i) assign the two new 4tb drives the disk3 and disk4 slots

(ii) assign the 'old' disk3 [b2SS] to disk 6

(iii) assign the old disk4 [D2BG] to disk 7

5) Modify share configuration in unraid to include disk6 and disk7

6) Start array

7) Perform parity check which will rebuild the parity since it may have been invalidated???

 

Part of me thinks after step 1 I actually need to remove all the unraid drive configuration so that unraid doesn't start thinking disk3 and disk4 took a dump and need recovering? Is this correct, and if so do i just run the initconfig command?

 

Just looking for some guidance as losing any data due to a silly oversight on my part is going to drive me bonkers!

 

thanks folks

Your setup has some special features, which might affect your disk swap strategy.

..so you might wait for someone else to chime in, but my initial reaction to your plan is, "NO!"

 

Only replace one drive at a time.

You can add several new drives at once, but don't try to change multiple existing drives all at once--you could lose data.

 

You're running V.5, right? v4.7 brings other concerns.

 

Try this:

• Parity check
  
• Replace existing Drive #4 with  a larger drive.
  
• Allow unRAID to rebuild #4.
  

...now your data is safely back on the larger #4, and you can just add the other drives as new capacity.

• (I'd check the parity again at this point...just to be sure.)
  
• Run pre-clear on the other new 4TB drive AND the old 2TB drive.
  
• Add the 4 and 2 TB drives as 'new drives' in the configuration.
  

Are you on unRAID 4.7, unRAID 5, or something else? You really should upgrade to 5 if you haven't already.

 

Do you want the data from the old drives to be on the new drives and the old drives to start empty? If so you will have to rebuild onto the new drives ONE AT A TIME.

 

If you are OK with the data staying on the old drives and the new drives starting precleared, then you could just do a new config and trust parity.

 

Also, unRAID 5 remembers drives by serial number so you could even just move them to the new enclosure with their data and just add the new precleared drives to the main enclosure and you would be done.

 

You're not actually replacing two drives here -- you're replacing one and adding one.

 

Do your reconfiguration in steps:

 

(1)  First, do a parity check and confirm everything is okay (all error counts zero).

(2)  Replace the 2TB drive with a new 4TB drive and let UnRAID do the rebuild.  When that's done, do another parity check to confirm all went okay.

(3)  Pre-Clear the other new 4TB drive, then add it to the array.

 

... at this point you have all the drives you want in the array.  You can freely change which SATA ports they're connected to ... so go ahead and move them to the positions you want (UnRAID tracks them by their serial numbers).

 

While the physical locations will now be what you want, the drive numbers may not be (I'm assuming that's part of your goal here).    In that case, simply do yet-another "safety" parity check;  then do a New Config with the "Trust Parity" option and assign the drive numbers you want.

 

Done 

You're running V.5, right? v4.7 brings other concerns.

 

A good point -- BUT not relevant to this question.  Clearly this is a v5 array ... otherwise there wouldn't be any drives > 2TB in it 

You're running V.5, right? v4.7 brings other concerns.

 

A good point -- BUT not relevant to this question.  Clearly this is a v5 array ... otherwise there wouldn't be any drives > 2TB in it 

Excellent Point!

I think the plan is ok. The drives are not being replaced as such, they are only being shuffled around. The new disk3 and disk4 do not contain any data and the old data remains on disk6 and disk7. The initconfig command has a GUI button in version 5, called "New Config". initconfig or New Config should be done after the parity check.

As dgaschk noted, your plan is actually just fine.    Somehow I missed that you weren't replacing the 2TB drive ... so Step 2 in my earlier note is NOT needed, since you're not replacing the drive.

 

All you need to do is (a) Do a parity check to confirm all is okay;  (b) pre-clear your new 4TB drives; and © add them to the array.

 

You're then at the point where everything you want is in the array -- so you can freely move the drives to whatever locations you want.

 

Hi all. Thanks for the replies. Yes sorry I should have made it clearer that I'm running unraid v5 (although I did think that all v4 support is in the other v4 sub forum?)

 

It seems like I'm best to just preclear the new 4tb drives and then add them to the array. After this I can just shuffle the disk assignments around. I guess I was just worried that unraid would complain about me 'swapping' an existing data drive with a new empty drive and would thus think it needs to rebuild the contents of the old 2tb onto the 4tb drive.

 

It seems like I do NOT need to run initconfig either.

 

Thanks again all - I'll hopefully get the chance to do this in the next week or so once I get some extra hardware shipped to me.

 

 

 

 

 

Sent from my GT-I9305 using Tapatalk

 

 

I'm not following. There is no room in the N54L for additional drives. unRAID may let you swap 2 disks within the array without doing a New Config (initconfig), but there is no way to remove a drive from the array without using New Config.

Hi. Do you mean physically there is no room for the drives in the n54l? If so then take a look at the link I put at the very start of my original thread to my plan to use the n54l with a SAS card to connect to the n36l which effectively is just a storage box holding additional drives (jbod)

 

So I guess my first step would be to install the SAS card and expand the number of drives I can connect to the array. I guess for the sake of simplicity I'd tag on the two new 4tb precleared drives which would be connected via the SAS card. Once those are part of the array I can freely move the physical location of the drives around as well as their connection point (the two original disk3 and disk4 drives come out of the n54l and move into the n36l housing.....and the two new 4tb disks switch into the n54l's drive cage)

 

Cwoar blimey it's a bit of a head scratch trying to get that to make sense in written form!

 

If I'm just blabbing on and you know all the above but still see something unclear then please call it out... I'd rather be 100% sure I know what I'm doing

 

Thanks again

 

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OK. The n36 is converted into a "SAS expansion chassis".

Yup - that sounds like a good way to describe it