hi all, i recently upgraded by former 6tg parity drive to an 8tb drive.  the former parity drive is still in the server

 

does it need to be precleared before adding as a data drive? 

hi all, i recently upgraded by former 6tg parity drive to an 8tb drive.  the former parity drive is still in the server

 

does it need to be precleared before adding as a data drive?

If you do not then unRAID will take the array offline while it clears the drive which takes hours.  Best option is to run preclear but use the option to skip the preread phase to speed things up as it is a disk you already trust.  You could probably also skip the write check phase to speed things up further but doing that phase might still be prudent.

A drive added to a new slot must be clear so parity will remain valid. If you were going to use it in an existing slot to rebuild another disk then it wouldn't have to be clear.

 

There is also a procedure where you could have added it before building parity but too late now. If interested in that shortcut for the future see bjp999's sig.

hi all, i recently upgraded by former 6tg parity drive to an 8tb drive.  the former parity drive is still in the server

 

does it need to be precleared before adding as a data drive?

 

Preclearing is never necessary... Just very highly advised.. You can also just add this drive without preclearing.. The array will be off for some time to clear the drive though... Since you have used this drive as parity drive you can check smart values, if they are fine you can just do the absolute minimum in preclear..

thanks all, i should have been a bit more clear.  i was wondering if unraid would effectively zero it before adding to the array, thereby taking the array out of commission for several hours...i'd prefer to have it not in the array so that array is usable while the preclear is happening.  You have answered that

 

since i know the drive to be good, i did skip the pre read, and may also skip the post read.

 

thanks for the feedback