Ability to remove drive from array without having to destroy parity

[jonp 436]

(Implies a wipe feature as well)

[Isolgrac 1]

Would this also include the ability to replace a drive without having to rebuild parity?

 

For example, if I want to replace an existing drive with a bigger drive (including the parity drive) it would be great if we could just add the new drive and tell unRaid that it was to replace an existing drive. UnRaid could then clone the existing drive over to the new drive (whilst not destroying parity) and once complete, automatically remove the old drive from the array. The key thing here is that while the clone operation takes place, any parity calculations include the clone pair as a single drive rather than as two separate drives.

 

Hopefully the above makes sense. If this isn't included in this feature, please can you move this post to a new feature request?

[itimpi 777]

Would this also include the ability to replace a drive without having to rebuild parity?

 

For example, if I want to replace an existing drive with a bigger drive (including the parity drive) it would be great if we could just add the new drive and tell unRaid that it was to replace an existing drive. UnRaid could then clone the existing drive over to the new drive (whilst not destroying parity) and once complete, automatically remove the old drive from the array. The key thing here is that while the clone operation takes place, any parity calculations include the clone pair as a single drive rather than as two separate drives.

 

Hopefully the above makes sense. If this isn't included in this feature, please can you move this post to a new feature request?

Replacing a drive with a bigger drive without breaking parity is already available and has been for a very long time.  During this process the array is actually unprotected, but as long as you still have the old drive you can still revert to the protected state if anything goes wrong.  I am not sure that your idea of having the old drive and the new one both plugged in and cloning actually adds any significant value, and it seems it could add a lot of unnecessary complexity.

[SSD 339]

Would this also include the ability to replace a drive without having to rebuild parity?

 

For example, if I want to replace an existing drive with a bigger drive (including the parity drive) it would be great if we could just add the new drive and tell unRaid that it was to replace an existing drive. UnRaid could then clone the existing drive over to the new drive (whilst not destroying parity) and once complete, automatically remove the old drive from the array. The key thing here is that while the clone operation takes place, any parity calculations include the clone pair as a single drive rather than as two separate drives.

 

Hopefully the above makes sense. If this isn't included in this feature, please can you move this post to a new feature request?

Replacing a drive with a bigger drive without breaking parity is already available and has been for a very long time.  During this process the array is actually unprotected, but as long as you still have the old drive you can still revert to the protected state if anything goes wrong.  I am not sure that your idea of having the old drive and the new one both plugged in and cloning actually adds any significant value, and it seems it could add a lot of unnecessary complexity.

(Commenting on bolded section] So long as you refrain from writing to the disk being rebuilt during its reconstruction process.

[Isolgrac 1]

My understanding is that to replace a drive you remove the old one and insert the new one and allow unraid to rebuild it from the parity calculations. Please let me know if this isn't the correct way of doing it currently because I'm about to do it and I don't want to make mistakes! :-)

 

If my understanding above is correct (and from your comment 'the array is actually unprotected' I assume it is) then I think what I'm looking for is a way to do it without leaving the array unprotected during the process. Not being familiar with the internals on unRaid I have no idea if this would add a significant amount of complexity over and above what is already planned for this feature (removing a drive) and so I asked if it would be possible to include it. I know that it is not an essential feature (or else it would be in already), but being able to upgrade drives without leaving the array unprotected for a period of time would be a big plus for users such as myself who are less skilled/confident in such matters.

[NAS 43]

You are talking about replacing a drive. We are talking about removing a drive (i.e. reducing the drive count in the server by one).

 

You have a right to be confused though as we touched on a lot of things namely my opinion that to upgrade  a drive you should not just pull one and have it rebuilt. For me this is a bad thing as it puts the system into a failed state for potentially a whole day+ in which time any real drive failure will result in data loss.

[Isolgrac 1]

You are talking about replacing a drive. We are talking about removing a drive (i.e. reducing the drive count in the server by one).

 

Ok, I'll raise this as a separate feature request then. Thanks for the clarification :-)

[NAS 43]

Just curious if this is being worked on or at least actively considered.

 

I raise it again as I am currently embarking on a new disk refresh and upgrade (3rd since we started discussing this) and it still maintain that this would both be a genuinely useful / time saving feature but also a Unique Selling Point that your competitors simply cant offer (due to the nature of the RAID they use) should be grabbed with both hands IMHO

[chickensoup 0]

Bumping this thread again to see if there are any plans to implement in the near future. 

 

I've had my server running extremely well for around a decade now (pre-4.7) and as a result, have some smaller disks I would prefer to phase out completely, reducing my disk count, rather than replace. I'm aware there are ways to do this but I'd currently require some assistance from the forums to make sure I don't break anything (i.e. rsync/move data on to alternate disk, remove, rebuild parity). 

 

The idea of being able to 'decomission' a disk seems like a great idea. 

[mgranger 0]

On 5/21/2019 at 2:00 AM, chickensoup said:

Bumping this thread again to see if there are any plans to implement in the near future. 

 

I've had my server running extremely well for around a decade now (pre-4.7) and as a result, have some smaller disks I would prefer to phase out completely, reducing my disk count, rather than replace. I'm aware there are ways to do this but I'd currently require some assistance from the forums to make sure I don't break anything (i.e. rsync/move data on to alternate disk, remove, rebuild parity). 

 

The idea of being able to 'decomission' a disk seems like a great idea. 

I would also like this.  I am fearful to add more disks to my array because they will be in my array forever (unless i break my parity to remove them)  Then I will have that many more disks in my array that could fail at some point.  Nice feature to have.

[andyd 3]

+1

 

But in general I think removing a drive should not require a wiki that has multi steps that can lead to loss of data if mishandled as in...

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/Shrink_array

 

I would be ok with rebuilding the array for now if there was a way to abstract the guide to a button in the OS itself that safeguards against any potential issues. Otherwise, it's seems odd that wanting to remove a drive that I have already moved data off of can still lead to a significant amount of data loss

Edited March 22 by andyd

[Squid 2797]

51 minutes ago, andyd said:

Otherwise, it's seems odd that wanting to remove a drive that I have already moved data off of can still lead to a significant amount of data loss

Think of it this way.  No OS in existence (today or the past) ever actually "deletes" anything off of a drive when you move / delete a file from it.  Rather it simply clears out the directory entry.  (This is why when you delete a file (or in Windows perform a quick format) you can quite easily recover the files that were contained on it with zero data loss)

 

Because nothing is ever actually deleted, the contents of those files (or more precisely the sectors on the hard drive) are still contributing to the parity system.  Only if you actually zero out the drive is it safe to remove without affecting a parity operation (Parity 1 at least)

 

Although I've never had a need to actually remove a drive (and don't foresee ever doing that in the future), if I was going to actually do it (knowing that my array is 100% healthy with no problems at all), I would simply issue a New Config and let the parity drives rebuild their contents accordingly.

 

All in all though, either way its far easier to remove a drive from unRaid than say something that runs RAID-5 where the process would basically be to copy the entire contents of the entire array somewhere else and then recreate the array and copy everything back.

[andyd 3]

That makes sense. Thanks for explaining! 

 

But I think there are legitimate reasons that people will want to swap drives out eventually - no sense in keeping older smaller drives when you start to run out of space and don't have enough ports. That is the issue with my current array.

 

I was going to post it as a separate feature request but it seemed like it belonged here. In general, I don't really care if the parity needs to be rebuilt etc. My main concern is that removing a drive requires several steps where it seems like a button that says "Remove Drive" should abstract those steps away

 

Edited March 22 by andyd

[Squid 2797]

1 minute ago, andyd said:

But I think there are legitimate reasons that people will want to swap drives out eventually - no sense in keeping older smaller drives when you start to run out of space and don't have enough ports. That is the issue with my current array.

 

Completely agree with that.  I just swap out the smaller drives for larger ones and let the system rebuild the drive and then expand it to the size of the replacement.   A feature to handle this all automatically would be nice for the very rare times that users require it.  I'm not really sure though if the development effort is worth it.  But, if enough people ask, Limetech does listen if it fits in with their development plans.