How do I swap a cache drive without a spare sata port?

[De1taE1even]

Normally, I'd assume that swapping a cache drive is pretty straight forward. Plug the new drive into the mobo, format, copy contents from old cache drive, shut down the array, assign the cache drive to the new drive, then start the array back up. Presto-change-o.

 

My problem is, I'm out of sata ports, so I have to unplug the current cache drive to install the new one. Could I use a usb enclosure for the new drive, and follow similar steps mentioned above? Something like this?

1. Install new drive into usb enclosure

2. Mount usb drive using unassigned devices plugin

3. Format the drive

4. Copy contents of current cache drive to new one

5. Shut down server, then physically replace old cache drive with new one

6. Start server without starting up the array

7. Assign cache to new drive

8. Start up the array

 

The most important thing for me is not to lose any settings for my plugins and dockers containers, all of which run off of the cache drive. I realize I'll have to reinstall the containers but I want to make sure they'll just pick up the appdata folder on the new cache drive and I won't have to reconfigure anything.

 

Am I on the right track? Anything I'm forgetting? Thanks for the help.

[JonathanM]

Probably easier to stop anything that's using the cache drive, (dockers, vm's, whatever) and copy the contents to a temporary folder on the array, swap the drives, and copy the stuff back.

[De1taE1even]

Oh yeah, hadn't thought of using the array as the transfer medium, duh...