I upgraded my server hardware AND finally moved up to 6.35 tonight.  Unfortunately, one of my data drives died during the move.  It WAS a 2TB, but I'd like to replace it with a 4TB and let the system rebuild/expand that slot.....  How do I do this?

 

My parity disk should be valid- ALL my other drives made the move just fine, and of course the system wants to rebuild parity- because of the move.  I'm itching to check the 'parity is still valid' box, but I remember warnings that it's easy to screw up at this junction. 

 

TL/DR: Moved drives to new server. (Upgraded M/B, mem, UnRAID version.)  A data disk died during move.  System doesn't trust parity. Parity should still be valid.  Want to replace failed drive with larger drive that's already precleared.  Confused how to safely proceed without losing the old drive's contents.

 

Help!

Edited October 7, 20178 yr by johnny121b

You can replace a failed drive with a larger one as long as it is not larger than parity.

https://wiki.lime-technology.com/Replacing_a_Data_Drive

Just now, wgstarks said:

You can replace a failed drive with a larger one as long as it is not larger than parity.

https://wiki.lime-technology.com/Replacing_a_Data_Drive

 

I'm confused as to HOW to do that- when the system doesn't TRUST the parity drive.  Regardless of whether I check the "Parity is already valid" box, the system still cautions "ALL DATA ON THIS DISK WILL BE ERASED WHEN ARRAY IS STARTED" .....which of course is exactly what I DON'T want to happen.

That warning should be for the replacement data disk, correct? If it's a new disk it'll be empty anyway. Any data on it will be overwritten with the data from the emulated disk.

Afraid not.  It's all caps, red, and right alongside the PARITY drive.  And I see past discussions regarding unexpected behavior of the parity rewrite during recovery scenarios...hence my paralyzing fear at-the-moment.

As long as you check the "parity is already valid" box it won't delete parity data, despite the warning, but you need all original devices to do that, is the 2TB disk still detected?

 

 

The original drive IS detected during the initial CMOS scan but is missing once UnRAID starts up (doesn't appear in the dropdown box).  The drive I want to install in its place DOES show up throughout- so it's no cabling/connection issue. 

For best results, this procedure should be done with the old disk or a new disk of the same size, if you only have a larger disk it should still work but you'll need to run fsck on it after it's done.

 

I'm assuming single parity only:

 

-Assign all disks, including the new disk to replace the failed disk, double check parity is in the correct slot

-check both "parity is already valid" and "maintenance mode" before starting the array

-start the array

-stop array, unassign disk to rebuild

-start array, check emulated disk mounts and contents look correct

-stop array, reassign new disk

-start array to begin rebuild

 

If using a larger disk run the appropriate fsck tool for the filesystem used on the rebuilt disk.

 

 

Ultimately (at Eric's advice), I restarted my server with the original 5.06 and launched the rebuild/expand process to add the new drive into the array.  Once that's completed, I'll upgrade to 6.35

 

To everyone- thanks for the help.

Ultimately (at Eric's advice), I restarted my server with the original 5.06 and launched the rebuild/expand process to add the new drive into the array.  Once that's completed, I'll upgrade to 6.35

 

To everyone- thanks for the help.

 

That's how it should be done, I assumed you didn't have the original config.