Parity Upgrade/Reuse Drive

[ptmuldoon]

As my Movie and collections continue to grow, I'm finally at a point of needing to upgrade my parity drive.  Currently, I have 7 Drives with room for more, and have a 1 TB parity and 6 1TB data drives.

 

Now I just precleared a 2TB drive and plan to swap that into my Parity slot.  My question is really can I take my existing 1 TB parity drive and then just add in as another data drive without having to preclear that one?  Or is it best to preclear the existing parity before adding it back in?

[gubbgnutten]

You can.  But if you don't preclear it, unRAID will have to clear it when it is added and your array will be offline during the clear.

[ptmuldoon]

You can.  But if you don't preclear it, unRAID will have to clear it when it is added and your array will be offline during the clear.

 

Ok, thanks.  Guess I'll just preclear it first, but not till after the new 2TB completes its parity sync.  That 2TB preclear on 3 cycles took 70hrs!

[JonathanM]

Actually, since you are rebuilding parity and not one of the data drives, there is a shortcut that can get both operations done at once without preclearing. First, take a screenshot or write down the drive assignments as they are right now. Set a new config in the tools menu, and go back to the main page and assign all the drives in the correct slots. Be positive that you assigned the correct drive to the parity slot, double check your work. Start the array, and it should build parity on the new drive based on all the old data drives and the old parity drive in a data slot. It should show the old parity drive as unmountable, you will need to check the box saying you are sure you want to format it, and then it will allow you to format and start using it.

 

Since you already started the parity sync without the old drive, you will need to preclear it to keep unraid from clearing it. Depending on how far along you are in the process, it may be quicker to stop the sync and set a new config with all the drives and start the parity sync over again.

 

One other VERY important detail. If you have any backups of your flash device from before this parity drive switch, be sure to remove the super.dat file or just delete the backup and take another after you are done.