CowboyRedBeard Posted February 16, 2018 Share Posted February 16, 2018 Just so I'm sure I'm doing this correctly, please check my plan with me. I've currently got a 6.4 box with the attached drive setup. I'm wanting to replace the 5TB parity drive with a 6TB drive I have, then (because I'm out of SATA ports) after I'm sure everything is good put that 5TB drive back in the array to replace one of the 2TB drives. I also have a second 6TB drive I'd like to replace another one of those 2TB drives with. I looked through the following: https://lime-technology.com/wiki/The_parity_swap_procedure And it seems that according to this: This procedure is strictly for replacing data drives in an unRAID array. If all you want to do is replace your Parity drive with a larger one, then you don't need the Parity Swap procedure. Just remove the old parity drive and add the new one, and start the array. The process of building parity will immediately begin. (If something goes wrong, you still have the old parity drive that you can put back!) I should: 1 - bring down the system 2 - swap 5TB parity drive for a new 6TB drive 3 - preclear the new 6tb drive 4 - bring the array online and build parity 5 - (after i'm sure everything is all good) bring the system down 6 - swap 1 of the current 2TB drives for the old 5TB parity drive 7 - boot up and clear the 5TB drive 8 - bring the array online and let it rebuild that drive 9 - bring the system down 10 - swap another 2TB drive for the other 6TB drive 11 - boot and clear the new 6TB drive 12 - bring the array online and let it rebuild Does that sound right? Link to comment
JorgeB Posted February 16, 2018 Share Posted February 16, 2018 46 minutes ago, CowboyRedBeard said: 3 - preclear the new 6tb drive this is optional if you want to test the disk 47 minutes ago, CowboyRedBeard said: 7 - boot up and clear the 5TB drive this is not necessary assuming the old parity disk is not showing any SMART issues. 47 minutes ago, CowboyRedBeard said: 11 - boot and clear the new 6TB drive clear not necessary, you can run a preclear if you want to test the new disk Link to comment
JonathanM Posted February 16, 2018 Share Posted February 16, 2018 Power down remove 5TB and replace with tested 6TB power up assign 6TB as parity and start array. Let parity rebuild, do a correcting parity check to make sure everything is built ok. Assuming you already trust the 5TB is good, no need to mess with it, just power down again, pull whichever 2TB is oldest or unhealthiest, plug in the 5TB, power up and assign 5TB in place of missing 2TB, allow array to rebuild it. Do a NON-correcting parity check to verify rebuild. Repeat with other 6TB, testing beforehand if desired. Smart reports before rebuild and after parity check will give you an indication of drive health if you don't test beforehand. If you keep the 5TB untouched and don't allow ANY writes to the array during the 6TB parity build and check process, you could still use the 5TB to rebuild one of the 2TB if it happened to fail mid process. All this is safe and tested, but I must ask, do you have backups? Major operations like this always increase the risk of data loss from equipment failure or dumb mistakes, either hardware or software. Your plan is solid, but has some unnecessary or slightly redundant steps, I'd rather see you do smart tests before and after builds and rebuilds and parity checks, if you do that the extra time spent preclearing is largely unnecessary or duplicate work. Link to comment
CowboyRedBeard Posted February 16, 2018 Author Share Posted February 16, 2018 Thanks guys! As far as backups go, not really. There are only a few folders that would be a serious problem if I lost them, aka family photos (my wife is a photographer so they're very large with CR2 files and versions edited and RAW). For those I thought I'd just copy it to an external drive. Maybe re-inserting the 5TB existing parity drive should be my last step so I can ensure I've always got a good parity drive? Link to comment
JonathanM Posted February 16, 2018 Share Posted February 16, 2018 53 minutes ago, CowboyRedBeard said: Maybe re-inserting the 5TB existing parity drive should be my last step so I can ensure I've always got a good parity drive? I'm not parsing this. As soon as you finish checking the newly built 6TB parity, the 5TB is no longer needed, and can be used as a data drive upgrade replacement. Parity is no more important than any other drive, it is the missing piece to rebuild 1 missing drive with all the other data drives. It doesn't hold any of your data. Link to comment
CowboyRedBeard Posted February 16, 2018 Author Share Posted February 16, 2018 I guess I misunderstood your question about backups, in my original thoughts on how to do this I assumed that if I had the 5TB existing parity drive set aside until it rebuilt with the new one and was tested, I should be golden right? I mean, after that, I'm redundant unless somehow I lose a drive AND the parity drive at the same time? Link to comment
JonathanM Posted February 16, 2018 Share Posted February 16, 2018 7 minutes ago, CowboyRedBeard said: I guess I misunderstood your question about backups, in my original thoughts on how to do this I assumed that if I had the 5TB existing parity drive set aside until it rebuilt with the new one and was tested, I should be golden right? I mean, after that, I'm redundant unless somehow I lose a drive AND the parity drive at the same time? As long as no bits are changed on any of the data drives in the interim, yes, you keep the ability to put the 5TB back in place as a valid parity drive. Link to comment
CowboyRedBeard Posted February 18, 2018 Author Share Posted February 18, 2018 WOW.... this has already been going for 21hrs. How long would you expect it to go??? ############################################################################################################################ # # # unRAID Server Preclear of disk WOL240380000 # # Cycle 1 of 1, partition start on sector 64. # # # # # # Step 1 of 5 - Pre-read verification: [13:41:04 @ 127 MB/s] SUCCESS # # Step 2 of 5 - Zeroing in progress: (68% Done) # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ** Time elapsed: 8:07:50 | Write speed: 148 MB/s | Average speed: 148 MB/s # # # ############################################################################################################################ # Cycle elapsed time: 21:48:55 | Total elapsed time: 21:48:56 # ############################################################################################################################ ############################################################################################################################ # # # S.M.A.R.T. Status default # # # # # # ATTRIBUTE INITIAL STATUS # # 5-Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0 - # # 9-Power_On_Hours 0 - # # 183-Runtime_Bad_Block 0 - # # 194-Temperature_Celsius 26 - # # 196-Reallocated_Event_Count 0 - # # 197-Current_Pending_Sector 0 - # # 198-Offline_Uncorrectable 0 - # # 199-UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0 - # # # # # # # # # ############################################################################################################################ # SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED # ############################################################################################################################ Link to comment
SSD Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 @CowboyRedBeard It's about half done. It does 3 compete disk operations - a complete read, a complete write, and a complete read/verify. Link to comment
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