July 13, 201411 yr If I install a 3TB data drive to an array with a 2TB parity drive, I understand I will only have access to 2TB on the 3TB drive (or only 2TB is protected by parity?). Now, if I later upgrade the parity drive to 4TB, will I then be able to access the full capacity of the 3TB data drive? Or will I have to re-install/format/preclear the data drive? I currently have two new 3TB drives and was planning to install one as parity. Then I realized that I'll have to eventually upgrade to 4TB anyway, so might as well do it sooner rather than later to avoid yet another parity rebuild. In the meanwhile I could run with the current 2TB parity drive until I get the 4TB drive, and use the two 3TB drives as data drives instead.
July 13, 201411 yr The array will not start unless the parity drive is equal or larger than any data drive. So, no.
July 13, 201411 yr I'd simply upgrade parity to 3TB for now so you can use the other 3TB drive (and convert the current 2TB parity drive to additional storage as well). However, there are a couple of other alternatives ... (1) Buy a 4TB drive for parity now ... that eliminates the future need to do another upgrade. (2) Change the 3TB drive to effectively a 2TB drive by using the SetMax function in HDat2, which will make it "look" like a 2TB drive -- it will then work fine in your current array. http://www.hdat2.com/ Note that if you do this, you can later change it back to its full size using the same function. Note that when you do that, UnRAID will think it's a different drive ... but you can just let it rebuild the "old" (2TB) drive on the "new" (3TB) drive and no data will be lost in the process.
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