Hi guys,

I am new in the unRAID community and as a user of this great software.

The server is running fine and now after a couple of weeks there is a question I like to ask the experts in the forum.

My setup is like this:

Parity: 3 TB

Data: 1x2TB and 4x1TB

 

If one of the data drivers fails in the future, I will of course upgrade and buy a larger drive (as they get cheaper), what if I buy a lets say 4TB drive.

 

Can I replace a 1TB drive with a 4TB now that this drive is bigger then parity? I guess not...

 

As I see it in this scenario, I cannot replace parity with the new 4TB drive because then I cannot rebuild the broken 1TB drive or?

To me it seems I always need to have (in my case) a 2TB drive lying around as spare just waiting for disc breakdown?

 

Or is there a smart solution built-in that I do not know about?

 

Cheers

 

/E

There is a special procedure called swap-disable ( http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/UnRAID_Manual#Replace_a_failed_disk ) to handle the situation where the replacement disk is bigger than the existing parity.

 

Basically it copies the original parity to the new bigger disk and then recovers the failed disk to the one which was the original parity disk

Thank you very much!

This swap-disable sounds almost to good to be true 

I guess this could also be useful to run if i just want to replace a data drive for a bigger one as well?

Just remove Data drive - Replace with former Parity - Insert new biggest drive in former Parity slot?

 

Thanks

 

/E