I finally got around to purchasing a 4TB drive to upgrade my 2TB Parity drive.  I have a pretty conservative build on v6 with 7TB of space and a 120 Gig cache drive.  I've read quite a few posts around how to do this upgrade and I think this is what need to do:

 

1.  Install the new 4TB drive and leave it unassigned

2.  Do a Preclear on the new 4TB drive

3.  Assign the 4TB drive as the parity drive

4.  Do a parity check

5.  Format the old 2TB parity drive

6.  Add the old 2TB parity drive to the array as a data drive

7.  Do another parity check?

 

Again, I'm sort of guessing this is what I need to do.  Would you agree?

 

I found Preclear in V6.  Is Preclear just ready to go in V6 or is there anything special I need to add to my USB drive?

 

Also, I just realized I'm out of SATA ports on my motherboard.  Back in the day I seem to remember this was an acceptable card to purchase for unraid:

 

http://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=2667

 

Is this still the case or is another card preferred that isn't terribly pricey? 

 

See this very similar thread.

Thanks.  What about the SATA card?  Does it seem like a reasonable one for a modest build?  Is there any reason I shouldn't be using it?

It will work but with 4 disks is going to limit your parity checks to ~30MB/s, you can find the Adaptec 1430SA on Ebay for a little more.

Thanks for that.  Those 1430SA's are only ~$25 on ebay.  Is that plug and play with v6?  It appears my motherboard has a PCI-Express 2.0 slot.  Is there any consensus on what 4-port SATA card might be best in this case?  I can spend a little more if it makes a difference.  Plug and play and stability with unRaid are my highest priorities.

They are plug n play and work very well with V6, can do ~200MB/s with 4 disks, you may need to upgrade firmware for >2tb support.

This one will also work, speed will be similar but can have issues with virtualization if you use it.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124060

I don't use virtualization, but have thought about it so I guess the Adaptec is the best choice.  Have you had to update the firmware on it?  Can you do it from inside the unRaid server?

I had to update mine, they need latest firmware for >2tb support, it can be downloaded from adaptec.com and updating is very easy, but I believe you need to boot to dos, you can use this method outlined by Garycase.

The Adaptec 1430SA came in. I was able to update the firmware just fine using the steps above. Thanks for that. However, unRaid doesn't seem to like it unless a drive is not plugged in to it. I did turn off the bios on the card itself. When ANY drive is plugged in to the card unRaid appears to go in to some kind of loop and the unRaid web interface won't come up. When no drives are plugged in to the card unRaid will boot AND the Adaptec card does show up as a device in unRaid. Anyone seen this before?  Is there anything more I should have done with the Adaptec card other than update the firmware and then disable the bios?

1430SA should be plug n play, you could try it on a different slot if available, also make sure you’re using the board’s latest bios.

1430SA should be plug n play, you could try it on a different slot if available, also make sure you’re using the board’s latest bios.

 

Thanks. The Adaptec bios is definitely the latest and the bios is disabled. It clearly reflects 2507 when you hit ctrl-a upon boot. I only have one pci-e 16x slot. The others are 2x and 1x so it won't fit in those. 

I was talking about the board bios, make sure it's latest also.

The Adaptec 1430SA came in. I was able to update the firmware just fine using the steps above. Thanks for that. However, unRaid doesn't seem to like it unless a drive is not plugged in to it. I did turn off the bios on the card itself. When ANY drive is plugged in to the card unRaid appears to go in to some kind of loop and the unRaid web interface won't come up. When no drives are plugged in to the card unRaid will boot AND the Adaptec card does show up as a device in unRaid. Anyone seen this before?  Is there anything more I should have done with the Adaptec card other than update the firmware and then disable the bios?

 

Can't remember the exact wording but you need to set the 1430SA card in JBOD mode (disable RAID).

 

I was talking about the board bios, make sure it's latest also.

 

That did it. Whew. I was sort of metaphorically white knuckling going through that process for fear something might mess up. I backed up the BIOS on the motherboard and then updated it. For whatever reason the server rebooted upon first boot, but then after that things started to look ok. I'm able to get to the web interface and all my drives seem to be there including the one attached to the Adaptec card. It appears as though I can start the array and simultaneously do a pre clear on the new drive.

 

Before I start the array I should probably confirm two things. The drives appear to be in the same location as before (parity, disk 1, etc.). However, the unRaid drive letters have changed. What was the drive for sde is now sdc, sdb is now sdg, etc..  Is that normal?

 

Also, I put my current parity drive on the Adaptec card with the soon to be parity drive on the motherboard sata. My thinking was that you want your parity drive attached to the motherboard and the current parity drive would be OK on the Adaptec card while the preclear completed. It's this the best way to approach this?  I thought it might not require me to open the server again since each drive was sort of already in there final place.

 

 

I was talking about the board bios, make sure it's latest also.

Before I start the array I should probably confirm two things. The drives appear to be in the same location as before (parity, disk 1, etc.). However, the unRaid drive letters have changed. What was the drive for sde is now sdc, sdb is now sdg, etc..  Is that normal?

 

Normal.

 

 

Also, I put my current parity drive on the Adaptec card with the soon to be parity drive on the motherboard sata. My thinking was that you want your parity drive attached to the motherboard and the current parity drive would be OK on the Adaptec card while the preclear completed. It's this the best way to approach this?  I thought it might not require me to open the server again since each drive was sort of already in there final place.

 

No problem,  performance should be similar.

 

Drive letter is assigned in the order they respond when booting. They can change even if you haven't made any hardware changes. Only the drive number matters.

Before I start the array I should probably confirm two things. The drives appear to be in the same location as before (parity, disk 1, etc.). However, the unRaid drive letters have changed. What was the drive for sde is now sdc, sdb is now sdg, etc..  Is that normal?

The sdX type device names are irrelevant in unRAID as disks are recognised by serial number.  In fact it is possible for them to change between boots as they are assigned dynamically by Linux as drives are recognised, so if one takes a bit longer than normal it can end up with a different sdX type designation from the previous boot.

Thanks for the help here.  I think I'm in the home stretch, but since I'll be expanding my array by adding a new parity drive I should probably ask a few things to be clear.

 

The pre-clear of the new parity drive (4TB) seemed to go fine (see screenshot).  So what is the best process for adding the new parity drive (4TB), while also reassigning the old parity drive (2TB) to a data drive slot?

 

My guess is:

 

1.  Stop the array

2.  Assign new 4TB drive as Parity and leave old parity drive unassigned.

3.  Start array and wait for parity sync to complete.  If the parity sync fails I can always go back to using the old parity drive...right?

4.  Once parity sync completes and looks ok with the new 4TB parity drive stop the array.

5.  Assign the old parity drive to a new data drive slot. 

6.  Yes, it will probably look to do a parity sync again, but don't you think this is the safest route to complete these steps?

7.  If parity sync completes OK, I am good to go!

 

I think there might be a way of consolidating the steps above using NEW CONFIG in TOOLS, but in my mind the following steps above make sense to me.  Other than saving time is there any additional benefit using NEW CONFIG over the steps outlined above?

My guess is:

 

1.  Stop the array

2.  Assign new 4TB drive as Parity and leave old parity drive unassigned.

3.  Start array and wait for parity sync to complete.  If the parity sync fails I can always go back to using the old parity drive...right?

 

Yes, as long as you don’t write anything to the array in the meantime.

 

4.  Once parity sync completes and looks ok with the new 4TB parity drive stop the array.

5.  Assign the old parity drive to a new data drive slot. 

6.  Yes, it will probably look to do a parity sync again, but don't you think this is the safest route to complete these steps?

 

Not needed, preclear it first, add to array, format and you're ready to go.

 

The pre-clear of the new parity drive (4TB) seemed to go fine (see screenshot).

 

Forgot to say that it's always good to check the preclear log, make sure pending and reallocated sectors stayed at 0.

Forgot to say that it's always good to check the preclear log, make sure pending and reallocated sectors stayed at 0.

 

Thanks.  I think its ok (see screenshot).