Quick upgrade strategy question

[Suse User]

I'd apprciate a quick answer on this if someone knows.....

 

I'm in the process of replacing some disks with larger ones...

 

Which of these scenarios would be quicker...

 

1/ Replacing a 250gb populated drive with a 400gb disk (my old parity disk) & rebuilding parity

 

2/ Moving the 250gb of data to another volume on the array leaving the Disk empty then rebuilding the array?

 

Also,

 

I want to use a 300gb disk (that has just been replaced with a 750gb one in my array) to replace another 250gb disk.  Is it safe to do this without erasing the data on the 300gb disk first?  Same question for my old Parity disk, safe just to replace a smaller volume with the old paroty disk without erasing it in some way first?

 

I know I could have simple replaced the 250gb with the 750gb in the first place, but there are reasons why I had to take this route (mainly I didn't want the 750gb drive in the least efficient cooling spot in the case).

 

Thanks,

 

Mark.

[BillK]

There are others here more knowledgeable, but I'll give it a shot.

 

First, I'd move one drive at a time and let unRAID rebuild either the data OR parity drive.  Swapping out both simultaneously (which is what option #1 sounds like) is a bozo no-no.  If I'm incorrect about #1 (i.e., you've already replaced your parity drive and rebuilt parity BEFORE thinking about reusing the 400GB drive), then I don't think it matters which option you choose, all other things being equal.  What may make the options unequal, however, is if one of the drives is significantly slower than the rest and/or you're mixing SATA and PATA drives on certain motherboards (see the other forums).

 

As to your questions about whether you can reuse an old drive without erasing the data, I believe the answer is "yes", but I'll leave the specific steps to the experts.  In a pinch, you could always hook it up to your PC and blow away the partition before reinstalling in in your server.

[Suse User]

There are others here more knowledgeable, but I'll give it a shot.

 

First, I'd move one drive at a time and let unRAID rebuild either the data OR parity drive.  Swapping out both simultaneously (which is what option #1 sounds like) is a bozo no-no.

 

I'm aware that I can replace only 1 drive at a time....

 

I'm just asking whether copying 250gb of data to another volume on the array, rebuilding the parity of a disk which now contains no files onto a larger one, then copying the data back to the newly installed volume is sufficiently quicker than simply getting UnRaid to rebuild the parity of a fully populated 250gb volume onto the larger replacement?

 

If I'm incorrect about #1 (i.e., you've already replaced your parity drive and rebuilt parity BEFORE thinking about reusing the 400GB drive), then I don't think it matters which option you choose, all other things being equal.  What may make the options unequal, however, is if one of the drives is significantly slower than the rest and/or you're mixing SATA and PATA drives on certain motherboards (see the other forums).

 

Yes, I have replaced the parity drive with a 750gb drive, I'm also an hour away from finished on replacing a 300gb Storage disk with a 750gb drive (which will have taken around 9 hours to rebuild from Parity).  I'm guessing it would only take a few hours to copy the files to spare space on the shiny new 750gb volume (say 5 hours top copying to new volume & back after drive has been replaced).  All drives are PATA(IDE) and none of those in question perform particularly worse than the others.

 

So.... "How long to rebuild Parity of a completely empty 250gb Volume onto a new 400gb Disk?, compared to rebuilding the parity of a fully populated 250gb Volume onto a new 400gb Disk is the question?

 

As to your questions about whether you can reuse an old drive without erasing the data, I believe the answer is "yes", but I'll leave the specific steps to the experts.  In a pinch, you could always hook it up to your PC and blow away the partition before reinstalling in in your server.

 

This is what I'll do if necessary, but a pain to do, so I'd rather not if it's not needed.

 

Thanks,

 

Mark.