I just wanted to say 'thanks' to Tom and the forum for providing both great software and support.

 

Yesterday, I received my first 'red' drive.  By doing a simple search for 'red' on the forum, I was quickly able to discern what had happened and how to fix it.  I didn't panic since I knew I had an empty drive already added to my array (a recently added spillover drive since I was starting to run low on my space for movies...oh well, I'll have to add another 5-bay enclosure soon), so I started copying the data immediately using MC.

 

My failed drive is under warranty, but it's an older IDE drive on a PCI controller, so I want be adding it back once the replacement arrives.

 

After my copy was complete this morning, I simply stopped the array, dropped the drive, reassigned the copied-to drive to that slot and then did a restore on my configuration (I know that's not good when replacing a drive though).  I'm now waiting for the customary 6-hour parity check to complete.

 

Everything went just as I expected and all my data is intact.  The parity check will finish some time this early afternoon, but as I said, my data is intact and my kids are at home watching their cartoons...just like nothing ever happened.

 

Thanks again for making this painless!

I agree. I had one of my Samsung 750G fail (after 13 months w/o issue). Using what I've learned on this site I added a 1.5T drive as a replacement then removed another 750G Seagate (failed SMART test months ago) w/o replacing the drive. All data is intact and my unRAID server is working just like I envisioned (which usually isn't the case with other things I buy). My son was so impressed with unRAID he wanted one as well so I built him one too. Just a great, easy to use product with some of the most helpful people I've ever encountered here on this forum. A big thanks to all of you for making unRAID such a great product.

I just wanted to say 'thanks' to Tom and the forum for providing both great software and support.

 

Yesterday, I received my first 'red' drive.  By doing a simple search for 'red' on the forum, I was quickly able to discern what had happened and how to fix it.  I didn't panic since I knew I had an empty drive already added to my array (a recently added spillover drive since I was starting to run low on my space for movies...oh well, I'll have to add another 5-bay enclosure soon), so I started copying the data immediately using MC.

 

My failed drive is under warranty, but it's an older IDE drive on a PCI controller, so I want be adding it back once the replacement arrives.

 

After my copy was complete this morning, I simply stopped the array, dropped the drive, reassigned the copied-to drive to that slot and then did a restore on my configuration (I know that's not good when replacing a drive though).  I'm now waiting for the customary 6-hour parity check to complete.

 

Everything went just as I expected and all my data is intact.  The parity check will finish some time this early afternoon, but as I said, my data is intact and my kids are at home watching their cartoons...just like nothing ever happened.

 

Thanks again for making this painless!

 

Glad you had such good experience. I wanted to make one minor correction, though, so that you and other readers of this thread understand this fully.  The technique you used to remove the old drive resulted in invalidating parity.  What you call a "6-hour parity check" is really a "6-hour parity REBUID"  Had you had another disk fail (unlikely but possible) before it was fully rebuilt, you'd have been in trouble.  There is an alternative.  You might want to read this post so that you are aware of both methods and the pros and cons.

I just wanted to say 'thanks' to Tom and the forum for providing both great software and support.

 

Yesterday, I received my first 'red' drive.  By doing a simple search for 'red' on the forum, I was quickly able to discern what had happened and how to fix it.  I didn't panic since I knew I had an empty drive already added to my array (a recently added spillover drive since I was starting to run low on my space for movies...oh well, I'll have to add another 5-bay enclosure soon), so I started copying the data immediately using MC.

 

My failed drive is under warranty, but it's an older IDE drive on a PCI controller, so I want be adding it back once the replacement arrives.

 

After my copy was complete this morning, I simply stopped the array, dropped the drive, reassigned the copied-to drive to that slot and then did a restore on my configuration (I know that's not good when replacing a drive though).  I'm now waiting for the customary 6-hour parity check to complete.

 

Everything went just as I expected and all my data is intact.  The parity check will finish some time this early afternoon, but as I said, my data is intact and my kids are at home watching their cartoons...just like nothing ever happened.

 

Thanks again for making this painless!

 

Glad you had such good experience. I wanted to make one minor correction, though, so that you and other readers of this thread understand this fully.  The technique you used to remove the old drive resulted in invalidating parity.  What you call a "6-hour parity check" is really a "6-hour parity REBUID"  Had you had another disk fail (unlikely but possible) before it was fully rebuilt, you'd have been in trouble.  There is an alternative.  You might want to read this post so that you are aware of both methods and the pros and cons.

 

Oops...I used wrong term, but I was aware I was destroying my old configuration and starting a new parity configuration.  I actually read the thread you posted prior as it came up while searching, but I didn't think the official way applied to me as I was getting errors on the failing drive.  The unofficial way seemed a bit involved for me at the time and I needed to get that data back online ASAP.  It was still a good read for me (I'm not very experienced in Linux, but am a Windows admin and very interested in it) and I bookmarked it for future reference.