[Solved] Moving Data drive to Cache

[wierdbeard65]

Hi,

 

I'm shuffling my disks around and I want to take one of my current data drives, replace it with a bigger one and then use it as a cache drive.

 

I'm not sure what the "correct" way to do this is....

 

Should I just replace it and allow the parity to rebuild. or copy the data off it to another disk in the array? How do I prep the drive (if at all) for cache?

 

My concern is that if I simply remove it from the array and let parity rebuild it, when I add it as cache there will be some form of conflict as all the files will still be on it.

 

Or am I worrying about nothing?

 

Thanks :-)

[lionelhutz]

You can just add it and then delete the files once the array is up. unRAID won't crash with duplicates. Or you could run the preclear to wipe out the existing data on the drive. You can use the switches that only write the disk and don't do the pre and post reading.

[wierdbeard65]

Many thanks!

[SSD]

There is a preclear option (-z?) that zeros the first x bytes on the drive. After doing that the drive will appear unformatted. When you add as cache unRaid will offer to format it. This is much much much faster than preclearing.