A number of times I have done a 'new config; because I want to change/remove a drive from the system.  The current option sets everything to 'blank' and you need to re-assign all the devices again and I have found this can sometimes be a little error prone and is also time-consuming if you have a lot of drives.

 

What would be useful is a variant of the 'new config' that put you into the state  that you are currently in after assigning all devices under the current 'new config' option.  At this point you are still able to unassign devices and/or change current assignments.  The advantage is that with this approach the system would now allow me to make the change to just the drive(s) I am interested in, and then on restarting the array would (assuming a parity drive is assigned) start building parity.

+1

 

I suggested something similar to this on another thread where the discussion went ON to zeroing out a drive and then allowing the user to remove it without causing a parity check.  I would just be happy with this proposal myself.

Great idea,  I regularly forget that running new config will wipe out all assignment which causes a headache.

 

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The oft-requested "Remove a drive" option is basically what this is essentially asking for (with the exception that the "remove a drive" option envisions maintaining parity throughout the process).

 

Not a bad idea ... but I have to wonder if it's really worth the effort.

 

As long as you know which drive to assign as parity and cache, none of the others matter ... so you can quickly go down the slots and just assign them randomly => certainly not much of a "headache" 

 

[i recognize that many of us are OCD when it comes to assigning drives that are in the same order as our slots in the PC, etc. => but I suspect those of us who do that (me included) also have a list of the drives vs. slots, so it's VERY simple to reassign them when needed.]

 

 

With apologies to Tom and Jon, I moved this here without asking you, because it seemed like an excellent idea, and relatively simple to implement, and in my opinion would be the preferred option over New Config in something like 90% of cases.

 

I'm not sure the best way to implement it.  You could add it as an equivalent feature to "New Config", called "Restart Config" (or something better!).  Or it could be added as a check box to New Config, whether the user wishes to start with the previous/current assignment list, instead of a cleared assignment list.

Isn't this how it used to work before version 5? When the devices tab was separate from the status tab?

Isn't this how it used to work before version 5? When the devices tab was separate from the status tab?

Not that I can remember.  You still had to reassign all the drives to the array again.  The biggest difference was you had to drop to the command line to issue the command.  Of course I don't know what it was like before 4.5.6 as that was the version I started with.

 

Edit:  maybe using "invalid slot <slot>" (or close to that name anyway) would do it?  I never tried that as it seemed like an advanced command and I certainly wasn't comfortable using anything beyond the basics.