Hello!

 

My unRAID array currently consists of a mixture of 500GB, 750GB and 1 TB drives (the parity drive obviously being one of the  1TB drives )

 

What if one of my 500GB drives die, and I would like to replace it with say a 1.5 TB or 2 TB drive? Is that at all possible ?

 

Switching the new drive to being the parity drive would not be feasible in this situation I guess (since the array is in a "degraded" state )

 

Theoretically, unRAID could support using only the first x GB of the new drive, x being equal to the size of the parity drive. But I don't think this is supported today, is it?

 

This situation is in my opinion not so unlikely. After I have filled my unRAID machine with the maximum number of drives possible, replacing drives would typically be done when a drive fails.

And it would then be interesting to be able to use a new drive which is larger than the current parity drive...

 

 

 

 

UnRaid has a special rebuild mode in which the parity disk is swapped to the larger disk and the rebuild is performed onto what was previously the parity disk.

Hello!

 

My unRAID array currently consists of a mixture of 500GB, 750GB and 1 TB drives (the parity drive obviously being one of the  1TB drives )

 

What if one of my 500GB drives die, and I would like to replace it with say a 1.5 TB or 2 TB drive? Is that at all possible ?

 

Switching the new drive to being the parity drive would not be feasible in this situation I guess (since the array is in a "degraded" state )

 

Theoretically, unRAID could support using only the first x GB of the new drive, x being equal to the size of the parity drive. But I don't think this is supported today, is it?

 

This situation is in my opinion not so unlikely. After I have filled my unRAID machine with the maximum number of drives possible, replacing drives would typically be done when a drive fails.

And it would then be interesting to be able to use a new drive which is larger than the current parity drive...

 

 

 

 

Yes, you can switch the parity drive to the new, bigger replacement while it is in the degraded state as long as you also assign the old parity drive to the failed data drive location AT THE SAME TIME.  When you do this, you then press "Start" to have the old parity data (from the old parity drive in the data slot) copied to the new parity drive, and then the system will use it to rebuild the data to the data drive slot (that now holds the old parity drive)

 

The official "manual" in the wiki says this:

[pre]

You must replace a failed disk with a disk which is as big or bigger than the original and not bigger than the parity disk. If the replacement disk is larger than your parity disk, then the system permits a special configuration change called swap-disable.

 

For swap-disable, you use your existing parity disk to replace the failed disk, and you install your new big disk as the parity disk:

 

  1. Stop the array.

  2. Power down the unit.

  3. Replace the parity hard disk with a new bigger one.

  4. Replace the failed hard disk with you old parity disk.

  5. Power up the unit.

  6. Start the array.

 

When you start the array, the system will first copy the parity information to the new parity disk, and then reconstruct the contents of the failed disk.

[/pre]

 

(I think you will need to Assign the disks to the correct roles on the devices page after you power back up, and will probably also need ot check the "I'm sure" button under the "Start" button to start the array.   Whatever you do, do not use the "Restore" button in this situation.  It does not restore data, but sets an initial configuration forgetting anything about your old parity.

 

I myself went through this procedure to test it out as it was broken in some of the older releases.  It was fixed, and works well.  It does take many hours to copy the old parity drive (in the data slot) to its replacement and then rebuild onto the old parity drive now used as a data drive, but it does work just fine.