i am looking to replace my 4 port ide card (with 4 250GB drives all with data on them) with a 4 port sata card. i have the card and 3 new 1TB sata drives waiting, i am just wondering how to go about this. should i physically move all the data off of the 4 ide drives and then remove them from the system? should i remove them one at a time and do a parity check in between all the moves? i have about 5.5 TB of data right now so parity checks take about 16 hours, but if that is what i have to do then that's what i will do. if there is another method that i am not familiar with please let me know. i have 2 open sata ports on the existing card that is in the system so i could add 2 of the 1TB drives there before i do anything else.

 

thanks in advance

kingpin

I'd recommend adding 1 or 2 of the 1T drives to the array, then copying the data from your 4 250G drives to them, and then removing the drives from the array.

 

1.  Run a full parity check (always a good idea before starting to mess around inside the server)

2.  Add 1 or 2 1T drives to the machine

3.  Use the preclear script on the 1 or 2 new drives (let it run 1-2 cycles to make sure the drives are good) - takes about 10 hours per cycle

4.  Once complete, add the 1 or 2 drives to your existing array (after preclear, this will go very quickly)

5.  Copy the data from your 4 250G drives to your new drives (recommend using Midnight Commander (type mc at a putty session), mv or cp commands, or something else to avoid having data go over the network).

6.  You have 2 choices for removing the 4 250G drives from the array - see this post.

7.  Add your new controller and repeat steps 3 and 4 with the new drives

8.  Run a final parity check to make sure all is well.

 

Alternatively, you could add your new controller and disks (step 7) at the same time your are adding and preclearing the disks in steps 2 and 3.  It will just mean quite a few MORE drives in the server which might be a problem depending on the size of your PSU.  You could preclear all of your disks at once this way and maybe save some time.

Hi,

 

I recently replaced 6 old PATA drives in one of my Unraid servers with some larger SATA drives. I used this procedure which I found very convenient.

 

1. First step was to run a parity check to ensure all drives (including the old PATA drives) were ok.

2. Second step was to remove all the PATA drives from the array (by disabling them on the device page). Thereafter I let a parity check run, thus without the PATA drives.

2. Third step was to install the SATA drive(s), one at a time to the array in the usual fashion.

3. Fourth, I designated the PATA drives, on at a time, as cache drive and hit the "move now" button for the cache drive on the Shares page. That way the data on each of the old PATA drives was moved to the new drives.

 

This procedure was very simple to perform. Of course, as soon as step 2 is run, there is no parity security for the old PATA drives.

 

The procedure would work as well also if you had to physically remove all the old drives from the server, as long as you had one drive slot left to insert the temporary "cache drive" for the transfer.

 

Regards

Jan

 

 

That's very clever!  It's an easier procedure for many users.  I do have some comments.

 

Requires Pro license, because it uses the Cache drive.

The "Move Now" step is for User Shares only, but this idea still makes moving files from other drives easy, because they are automatically mounted.

The "Move Now" step may require a little setup first, each User Share must be configured with the destination drive 'Included'.  For example, a single drive User Share on one of the removed drives, must be adjusted to Include the new destination drive.

Removed drives are temporarily not parity protected.  Not a big issue in my opinion.

In your Step 2, 'parity check' is actually 'parity build'.

My one suggestion, since parity is lost briefly any way, and you want the data from the removed drives returned to parity protection as soon as possible, is delay rebuilding parity until after all data has been moved to final destinations.  The data transfers will be much quicker, and therefore parity downtime reduced.

 

The steps become:

1. Run a parity check to ensure all drives (including the drives to be removed) are OK.

2. Un-assign all drives to be removed, and the parity drive, and any Cache drive.

3. Shutdown, and install one or more of the new drives.

4. Boot, and assign one or more of the new drives, Start the array, format and add them to the array.

5. Ensure any User Share reconfiguration is complete for User Shares that will moved to these new drives.  Make sure the new drives are 'Included'.

6. Stop the array, assign one of the old drives to be the Cache drive, and restart the array.

7. Use the 'Move Now' command to move User Shares to new drives.

8. Manually move other files and folders to new destinations, if necessary.

9. Repeat from Step 3 for any additional new drives.

10. Un-assign temporary Cache drive, re-assign correct Cache drive if necessary, re-assign parity drive, Start array to rebuild parity.