Hi all,

 

I've had a total of 5 drives in the array, parity, disk 1, and disk 2 were 2TB drives and disk 3 and 4 were 1TB files. I've replaced the Parity, Disk 1, and Disk 2 drives successfully with their new and bigger replacements, it took a while since I did them one by one, doublechecking disk slots (I moved a couple around), and doing a non-write parity check after each change to make sure every change was A-OK.  My last recent actions were replacing disk 3 1TB drive with the old previous parity drive which was a 2TB drive, no problems. Checked parity, all good. I then replaced disk 4 1TB with a previous disk 1, which was a 2TB drive, I somewhat knew unRAID can handle replacing the drives, it was straight forward, shares OK and parity check A-OK again.

 

Now, I am left with 2 1TB drives. They currently have data on it. The data is irrelevant to me, I can format these drives or lose them and have no concern since my array as they currently stand are up and functional again.

 

My question is (sorry it took so long), if I now re-instate these old drives to a new slot, will unRAID automatically clear them and make them available as fresh drives? Technically I am thinking they will, because even though unRAID recognises these as older disks, I have already gone through the replace data drive process (https://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Replacing_a_Data_Drive) and now unRAID should make them new disks ready for use.

 

Thank you for your time.

Yes, array will be unavailable during clearing, you can use the preclear plugin to avoid down time.

Yes, as long as you ADD them to the parity-protected array.    As noted, UnRAID will clear the disks before actually allocating them to the array, and the array will be unavailable during that time.    You can avoid this by using the pre-clear utility, which will clear them "outside" of the array => after they're pre-cleared the process of adding them will be VERY quick (a few seconds).    Since these are well-used (and thus well tested) disks, you can skip the pre- and post- read phases, which will only take about 1/4th of the time of a full pre-clear cycle [if you use the script, that's the -n option;  I haven't used the plugin, so I'm not sure if it supports this option, but I suspect it does].

 

Thank you very much lads! I think I'll use the pre-clear via the web-gui as I'm more comfortable in doing it that way. I'll install the plugin and run it.

 

So from here:

 

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Configuration_Tutorial#Preclearing_via_Web_GUI_with_unRAID_v6

 

I can get it from here:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=39985.0

 

 

Not trying to second guess your process, but would have suggested upsizing parity and then adding the precleared new drives to the array as empty. Upsizing data disks only to add the smaller disks back to the array doesn't do anything of value IMO.

 

Did you preclear the new larger drives? Too late to do so now, but suggest paying attention to the smart attributes for signs of infant morality. In the future, all new drives should be precleared, even if a preclear signature is not actually needed, as it is a useful burn in test.

 

Given where you are, you might consider leaving the 1T drives on the shelf and treating them as backups of the data on them now. You can always preclear them later and use them, but you are probably not hurting for storage right now. 1T is pretty small these days, and especially if these are long in the tooth, I'd look to add new, larger drives when you need more space.

Not trying to second guess your process, but would have suggested upsizing parity and then adding the precleared new drives to the array as empty. Upsizing data disks only to add the smaller disks back to the array doesn't do anything of value IMO.

 

Did you preclear the new larger drives? Too late to do so now, but suggest paying attention to the smart attributes for signs of infant morality. In the future, all new drives should be precleared, even if a preclear signature is not actually needed, as it is a useful burn in test.

 

Given where you are, you might consider leaving the 1T drives on the shelf and treating them as backups of the data on them now. You can always preclear them later and use them, but you are probably not hurting for storage right now. 1T is pretty small these days, and especially if these are long in the tooth, I'd look to add new, larger drives when you need more space.

 

In the end I kept them all, I just wanted to have them in certain sata ports (I know weird). The intention was to slowly replace the rest of the smaller drives with 5TBs also, so I would only work down the sata ports. No I didn't, I will next time though appreciate the suggestion. I was considering using one of the 1TB as cache, but decided I wont.

Not sure what you mean about sata ports. You are free to connect drives to whatever port you like, and move them around even to new controllers. Very old versions of unRaid identified disks by port, but that was changed.

Not sure what you mean about sata ports. You are free to connect drives to whatever port you like, and move them around even to new controllers. Very old versions of unRaid identified disks by port, but that was changed.

 

My apologies, it's midnight, not thinking right. But yes I did things the long way around for sure.

 

Update:

 

My bigger drives at the time (2TBs) were strictly media files that I allocated to handle Movies, TV, and Anime. The smaller drives I designated as "data" drives that held things like my documents, files, photos, and apps (ie. plex). My intention was to ensure that the media focused drives were replaced with bigger and faster drives (direct play 1080 content via PMS), then the plan was to re-instate the now smaller drives (previously bigger) to act as storage holders for the non-media drives, ie. data backups, apps, etc. Since I my Supermicro C2SEE motherboard only accommodates 6 SATA devices, the temporary plan was to keep my array up and running with less devices. Until I get my LSI 9211-8i up and running, pending arrival of SFF-8087 cables, I can re-instate the smaller drives.

 

I am thinking now of getting more 5TB drivse instead of re-instating these 1TB drives.