February 18, 201610 yr I have unraid 6.1.8 and my array is in a hotswap bay. Can I just pull out a drive and put a bigger one in and let the parity rebuild it?
February 18, 201610 yr I have unraid 6.1.8 and my array is in a hotswap bay. Can I just pull out a drive and put a bigger one in and let the parity rebuild it? Not without stopping the array first. In fact, it's probably best to shutdown before plugging and unplugging drives, though it may work depending on your hardware. I often plugin an eSATA drive with everything still running but it is not part of the array.
February 18, 201610 yr I have unraid 6.1.8 and my array is in a hotswap bay. Can I just pull out a drive and put a bigger one in and let the parity rebuild it? Stop and think about your request. What happens when you pull a drive from an array when data is being written to the drive???
February 18, 201610 yr Author I have unraid 6.1.8 and my array is in a hotswap bay. Can I just pull out a drive and put a bigger one in and let the parity rebuild it? Stop and think about your request. What happens when you pull a drive from an array when data is being written to the drive??? In a hotswap situation the array goes to degraded state until the new drive is put in.
February 18, 201610 yr I have unraid 6.1.8 and my array is in a hotswap bay. Can I just pull out a drive and put a bigger one in and let the parity rebuild it? Stop and think about your request. What happens when you pull a drive from an array when data is being written to the drive??? In a hotswap situation the array goes to degraded state until the new drive is put in. I don't think unRAID currently supports hotswap.
February 18, 201610 yr I have unraid 6.1.8 and my array is in a hotswap bay. Can I just pull out a drive and put a bigger one in and let the parity rebuild it? Stop and think about your request. What happens when you pull a drive from an array when data is being written to the drive??? In a hotswap situation the array goes to degraded state until the new drive is put in. I think that is probably what would happen. The main question I would have is would it recognize that a new drive was available. In any case the degraded array would continue to run with the missing disk emulated until you stopped the array, selected the new disk, and started the array. So you might as well stop the array before removing the drive since you will have to stop it to select the new one anyway.
February 18, 201610 yr In a hotswap situation the array goes to degraded state until the new drive is put in. unRAID never makes assumptions about your intentions for any drive it finds, it works on the assignments you make. Many unRAID users have extra drives installed, for application use, for preclearing, for an empty drive when a new drive is needed, etc. So to replace a drive, you need to unassign it, then assign the new one, all of which is done with the array stopped. A missing drive may or may not be intentional. Often, we find that it may have become unresponsive due to cable or controller issues, and once rebooted, the drive is back.
February 18, 201610 yr I don't think unRAID currently supports hotswap. Linux supports hot swap, and unRAID mostly does, but I think unRAID can become confused, if drive symbols are reused by the kernel. For example, if sdj is removed and a new drive inserted, and the kernel for some reason assigns it to sdj too (because it thinks it's available now), then unRAID may assume the inserted drive sdj to be the same drive it previously knew as sdj. (I'm guessing a little here, don't remember for sure how it appeared to work.) I would be very careful with hot swap, and monitor the symbol assignments. It's probably safest to use outside of the array.
February 18, 201610 yr Author I don't think unRAID currently supports hotswap. Linux supports hot swap, and unRAID mostly does, but I think unRAID can become confused, if drive symbols are reused by the kernel. For example, if sdj is removed and a new drive inserted, and the kernel for some reason assigns it to sdj too (because it thinks it's available now), then unRAID may assume the inserted drive sdj to be the same drive it previously knew as sdj. (I'm guessing a little here, don't remember for sure how it appeared to work.) I would be very careful with hot swap, and monitor the symbol assignments. It's probably safest to use outside of the array. Well I have a full backup so I may just try it. You know for science
February 19, 201610 yr Another thing to note is your disk controllers should be in AHCI mode for the drives you intend to hot swap.
February 19, 201610 yr Author So I took the easy road and stopped the array. Changed the drive(Selected the dropdown) to No Device and swapped out the drive with the new larger one. I waited maybe 1 minute and the new drive showed up in the drop down. I selected it and restarted the array. It started rebuilding immediately after that.
February 19, 201610 yr So I took the easy road and stopped the array. Changed the drive(Selected the dropdown) to No Device and swapped out the drive with the new larger one. I waited maybe 1 minute and the new drive showed up in the drop down. I selected it and restarted the array. It started rebuilding immediately after that. unRAID + motherboard that supports hot swapping works well for unassigned devices. Do it all the time for preclearing drives. Hot swapping Array devices is highly discouraged: although I believe the inability of hot swapping array devices presently is something that will change in the future as unRAID evolves. 2¢.
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