Hi, I have an unRAID system with dual parity drives. Both of the parity drives are currently 1TB. I can't seem to find any documentation/forum posts/wiki articles with specifics about dual parity. I am wondering if both parity drives have to be the same size, or if they can be unequal sizes, provided the largest data drive is smaller or equal to the smallest parity drive. For example, my proposed setup would have the first parity drive as 3TB, the second as 1 TB, and all subsequent data drives as 1TB or smaller. Would that work?

 

Thanks for the reply! It seems I missed that when perusing the FAQ

1 hour ago, rfourb said:

my proposed setup would have the first parity drive as 3TB, the second as 1 TB, and all subsequent data drives as 1TB or smaller. Would that work?

 

Yes, as already noted that will work.   But why are you doing that?    If it's a temporary state until you can afford larger drives for the 2nd parity and the data drives;  or perhaps you simply have a 3TB drive handy that you want to use, then it makes sense.    But there's NO advantage to having a parity drive larger than your data drives unless you plan to use data drives as large as the parity drive -- and of course with a dual parity system the first thing you'd need to do is increase the size of the other parity drive.

 

Just now, garycase said:

But why are you doing that?

It's only temporary until I pick up some bigger drives. I already have the larger drive, it's coming out of one of my other servers. I just want to get started on the upgrades to move away from the 1TB limit I have right now, especially considering how cheap storage is becoming.

I had assumed that was the case -- just wanted to be sure you understood that there's no reason to use a larger parity drive if you're not moving to that size for your data drives.