So I just got a warning from unraid this morning regarding Disk 5 that it has current pending sectors: 1

 

So I know this is an issue and I need to resolve it ASAP.

 

In general the recommendation is to replace the drive with a precleared spare...unfortunately, I do not have a spare, so I would have to order one (probably a 3TB WD Red that is on sale at newegg)...so it won't get here until next week and then I have a day of preclearing.

 

So I was wondering, since I have free space on my array (2.2 TB), should I move the contents of Disk 5 (660 GB) to another drive, and then remove the drive from the array.  The problem with this is that the array will not be protected while the parity is recalculating after removing the drive.

 

I would love to not spend the money on a new drive right now...but don't want to be pound wise and penny foolish. 

 

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

Dan

 

 

 

It's when you don't have a spare that the worst things happen. Always have a spare pre cleared drive on hand.

 

Here is what I expect you will find. Once you rebuilt that disk onto the newly cleared drive and are sure that the array is back in safe status, you will then proceed to pre clear the old drive that is showing problems. It will self heal itself during the pre clear and become available as a spare for next time.  I have had that happen at least 20 times compared to one real drive failure.

 

Still I always keep pre cleared spares handy. The nice thing about having spares is you can do multiple pre clears easily on the questionable disk at your leisure without worrying about your data integrity.

 

Then like @garycase, I always have my backup servers adding an additional level of protection for the extra important irreplaceable data.