Parity drive upgrade

[French-Guy]

OK, got my 8TB Easystore from Bestbuy...............not a Red this time, but a White. It means I "may" have the 3.3V issue....

Anyway, now I want to fix my issue with my 2 drives (Disk 2 and Disk 3)

Followig the "Safer method" detailled above, and knowing I have hot swap bays:

1) Take Disk 2 out and put new 8TB inside the same bay? (unless I should start with Disk 3 or it doesn't really matter)

2) Power ON

3) Assign the new 8TB to replace missing Disk 2? (and I guess if I don't see the 8TB drive, it means I have the 3.3V issue, right?)

4) Start the array and let unRaid rebuilt onto newer drive

 

Waiting for your confirmation before moving forward

Once those steps are completed, I will take care of the 2nd disk (3 or 2, depends on Step 1)

 

Thanks

 

 

[trurl]

5 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

Take Disk 2 out and put new 8TB inside the same bay?

Of course it has no way to know what bay you put it in. And it doesn't care what port you attach it to. Or even if the original Disk2 is still attached. It won't do anything at all until you assign the new disk to the Disk 2 slot in the webUI and start the array.

 

8 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

(unless I should start with Disk 3 or it doesn't really matter)

I will defer to @johnnie.black or someone else whether it is safer to use disk3 to rebuild disk2, or to use disk2 to rebuild disk3. I will just link back to the post I made showing the SMART issues of those 2 disks here:

 

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/75751-parity-drive-upgrade/?do=findComment&comment=698889

 

11 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

if I don't see the 8TB drive, it means I have the 3.3V issue

I'm not familiar with that issue so will let someone else handle that question as well.

[French-Guy]

20 minutes ago, trurl said:

Of course it has no way to know what bay you put it in. And it doesn't care what port you attach it to. Or even if the original Disk2 is still attached. It won't do anything at all until you assign the new disk to the Disk 2 slot in the webUI and start the array.

 

I will defer to @johnnie.black or someone else whether it is safer to use disk3 to rebuild disk2, or to use disk2 to rebuild disk3. I will just link back to the post I made showing the SMART issues of those 2 disks here:

 

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/75751-parity-drive-upgrade/?do=findComment&comment=698889

 

I'm not familiar with that issue so will let someone else handle that question as well.

OK, will wait for Johnnie.black about starting with Disk 2 or 3 ...........but I'm confused when you say use D3 to rebuild D2 (or vice versa)

I thought D2 (and right after D3) will rebuilt onto the newer 8TB?

 

To come back on your comment "Of course it has no way to know what bay you put it in. And it doesn't care what port you attach it to. Or even if the original Disk2 is still attached. It won't do anything at all until you assign the new disk to the Disk 2 slot in the webUI and start the array"........I think I understand, but anyway the "simplest" way is to physically remove D2 and install the 8TB in the same bay?

[trurl]

18 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

the "simplest" way is to physically remove D2 and install the 8TB in the same bay?

Depends on your definition of simplest. I can think of some scenarios where it might be useful to keep the disk in whether you move it or not. If you want to have your disks in some order inside the case suit yourself, but there is no way for the computer to know where in the case a disk is.

[JorgeB]

I would replace disk3 first, it the one more likely to have read errors.

[John_M]

9 hours ago, French-Guy said:

I'm confused when you say use D3 to rebuild D2 (or vice versa)

In order to rebuild any disk, all the others need to be perfectly readable, otherwise there will be errors in the file system of the rebuilt disk. So to rebuild Disk 2 you need Disk 3 to be in as perfectly readable as possible, and vice versa. So it makes sense to try to replace the disk that is more likely to have read errors first.

[French-Guy]

Ok, i will apply the "safe method" described above starting with Disk3

However, all data from Disk 2 were copied to Disk 4 (with unBALANCE) a few days ago (when I was trying to have all my disk under xfs)....

Does it change something?

I think my question is does it make sense to copy Disk2 onto the new 8TB drive (which is the 2nd part of the safe method) since data are already on Disk4?

[JorgeB]

5 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

does it make sense to copy Disk2 onto the new 8TB drive (which is the 2nd part of the safe method) since data are already on Disk4?

No need.

[trurl]

55 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

Ok, i will apply the "safe method" described above starting with Disk3

However, all data from Disk 2 were copied to Disk 4 (with unBALANCE) a few days ago (when I was trying to have all my disk under xfs)....

Does it change something?

I think my question is does it make sense to copy Disk2 onto the new 8TB drive (which is the 2nd part of the safe method) since data are already on Disk4?

All of these questions, and your reference to the post where you quoted the wiki about shrinking the array, make me wonder if you actually have a good grasp on exactly what you need to do at this point.

 

Forget about shrinking the array for now. You need to concentrate on rebuilding disk3. Then when that is done and anything else that needs to be done to make sure you still have your data, then we can talk about removing disk2.

 

And removing disk2, since it is already empty, will only require you to New Config without that disk and rebuild parity, if shrinking the array is indeed what you want to do. If not, then rebuilding the empty disk2 onto a new disk is also possible.

 

So, without any reference whatsoever to that "safe method", which is irrelevant, tell us exactly what you intend to do to replace/rebuild disk3 so we can clear up any misunderstandings. Then when that is done we can decide what to do next.

 

 

[French-Guy]

So I've taken out Disk3 and installed instead the new 8TB drive

I've assigned this new drive to Disk3 in the GUI

Then I started the array, and now it says Parity sync/Data-rebuild 0.5%............................So wait and see

 

After this 1st step is completed, I will skip step (4) of the "safe method" since there is no need to copy Disk2 onto the 8TB drive

I will shut down, physically remove Disk 2, power up and then use New Config to unassign Disk2 and Disk3

Am i correct?

 

Thanks

[French-Guy]

3 minutes ago, trurl said:

All of these questions, and your reference to the post where you quoted the wiki about shrinking the array, make me wonder if you actually have a good grasp on exactly what you need to do at this point.

 

Forget about shrinking the array for now. You need to concentrate on rebuilding disk3. Then when that is done and anything else that needs to be done to make sure you still have your data, then we can talk about removing disk2.

 

And removing disk2, since it is already empty, will only require you to New Config without that disk and rebuild parity, if shrinking the array is indeed what you want to do. If not, then rebuilding the empty disk2 onto a new disk is also possible.

 

So, without any reference whatsoever to that "safe method", which is irrelevant, tell us exactly what you intend to do to replace/rebuild disk3 so we can clear up any misunderstandings. Then when that is done we can decide what to do next.

 

 

Looks like I posted my latest message when you posted yours......Right now, I'm rebuilding Disk 3 onto the new 8TB drive

What I want to do ultimately is to get rid of Disk2 and Disk3 that are apparently dying

 

 

[trurl]

2 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

So I've taken out Disk3 and installed instead the new 8TB drive

I've assigned this new drive to Disk3 in the GUI

Then I started the array, and now it says Parity sync/Data-rebuild 0.5%............................So wait and see

 

That is right so far.

2 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

After this 1st step is completed, I will skip step (4) of the "safe method" since there is no need to copy Disk2 onto the 8TB drive

I will shut down, physically remove Disk 2, power up and then use New Config to unassign Disk2 and Disk3

Before doing that I would check to make sure you still have all your data from disk3. It is possible there may be problems with the rebuild so lets not rush to the next steps. After the rebuild of disk3 is complete, post your diagnostics and confirm your data is there.

 

2 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

Looks like I posted my latest message when you posted yours......Right now, I'm rebuilding Disk 3 onto the new 8TB drive

What I want to do ultimately is to get rid of Disk2 and Disk3 that are apparently dying

The rebuild will take a while onto 8TB even if everything goes well.

 

After the rebuild, you will still have a disk3, it will just be a different physical disk with all the data the former disk3 had on it.

 

As for disk2, do you really want to have fewer disks in the array? Or do you want to just have a new, empty disk for disk2?

[trurl]

12 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

I will shut down, physically remove Disk 2, power up and then use New Config to unassign Disk2 and Disk3

Actually, there is a bit wrong here. You won't be unassigning disk3. Whether you want to new config without disk2 depends on whether you want fewer disks or not.

 

Anyway, when we get to this point we can clear this up. I am sure you will have some questions about New Config if that is what you want to do.

[French-Guy]

19 minutes ago, trurl said:

That is right so far.

Before doing that I would check to make sure you still have all your data from disk3. It is possible there may be problems with the rebuild so lets not rush to the next steps. After the rebuild of disk3 is complete, post your diagnostics and confirm your data is there.

 

The rebuild will take a while onto 8TB even if everything goes well.

 

After the rebuild, you will still have a disk3, it will just be a different physical disk with all the data the former disk3 had on it.

 

As for disk2, do you really want to have fewer disks in the array? Or do you want to just have a new, empty disk for disk2?

-) I will post my diagnostic once rebuilt of Disk3 is completed (3.5% now) However, how do I confirm if all my data from 1 disk is here? I mean I can take a look at my Shares and watch for something obvious, but if only a few files are missing, how can I find out?

-) I think I was maybe mixing between physical hard drives and Disk slots? But I understand now I will still have Disk 3 (as disk slot) but with a new physical drive (WD White 8TB)

-) I'm not specifically trying to have fewer disks in the array: I just want to get rid of the 2 physical hard drives (that are in Disk 2 and Disk3 slots) since they both show "alarming" warnings....................So for me - and only talking about physical hard drives - it's removing 2 and adding a new one

 

Hoping what I just wrote makes sense 🙄

[trurl]

If you don't end up with any read/write errors (the Errors column on Main - Array Devices) on any disks during the rebuild, and if the rebuilt disk doesn't wind up as an Unmountable Filesystem, then it is very likely that everything went well and you will have all the files that were on the disk.

 

I am reviewing your thread and working on a post regarding the disposition of disk2, but while I do that and while we wait for your rebuild, let me go back to an earlier point I made. Have you taken care of this?

On 11/22/2018 at 10:21 AM, trurl said:

Do you have Notifications setup to alert you immediately by email or other agent when you have any issues?

If you had Notifications setup then instead of this thread, you probably would have started another thread sometime ago where we would have helped you with a single disk that was having an issue, instead of multiple disks. Unraid parity can only reliably rebuild a disk if ALL bits of ALL other disks can be read reliably. So obviously having multiple disks with issues puts you at great risk for data loss.

 

[French-Guy]

Yes, I did take care of the notifications.......

And yes, I should have paid more attention to the "health" of my drives................Lesson learned !

Sorry to bother you with all my questions, but I'm learning a lot actually 

[trurl]

At this post in the thread

 

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/75751-parity-drive-upgrade/?do=findComment&comment=698617

 

we had just begun to consider changing your disks to XFS. Disk2 is now a newly formatted and empty XFS disk, but it needs to be replaced or removed.

 

All your other disks are ReiserFS, including the currently rebuilding Disk3. After the rebuild, it will still be ReiserFS since parity doesn't know about anything except bits and it is putting all the bits back just like they were before.

 

If you want to continue with the conversion to XFS (and you should eventually), instead of removing Disk2 and rebuilding parity, you might want to consider rebuilding the empty XFS Disk2 to a new larger disk. This will make room for the data on other disks as you convert them to XFS. Then after you get all the data where you want it on XFS disks, you could consider removing any leftover disks you don't need anymore.

[French-Guy]

1 hour ago, trurl said:

we had just begun to consider changing your disks to XFS

Yes, after installing a larger parity drive, I realized the former parity drive (Disk 5 - 2TB) was formatted as xfs. So I started converting the other hard drives to xfs as well (Disk 4 and then Disk 2)

1 hour ago, trurl said:

Disk2 is now a newly formatted and empty XFS disk, but it needs to be replaced or removed.

Exactly

1 hour ago, trurl said:

If you want to continue with the conversion to XFS (and you should eventually)

Seems to be the recommendation from several people actually, so yes I want to do that

1 hour ago, trurl said:

instead of removing Disk2 and rebuilding parity, you might want to consider rebuilding the empty XFS Disk2 to a new larger disk

Does that mean getting another hard drive, on top of the recently added 8TB white (on which Disk 3 is being rebuilt)?

 

 

And by the way, I'm at 18.2% of the data rebuild...!

Edited November 25, 2018 by French-Guy

[trurl]

31 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

I realized the former parity drive (Disk 5 - 2TB) was formatted as xfs.

This might be what you mean, but just to clarify, parity drive doesn't know anything about filesystems as already noted. Parity drive is NOT formatted as anything. What happened is when you put it in to a new slot as Disk5, Disk5 got formatted to the default filesystem which is XFS.

 

Above I had said all your other disks besides Disk2 were ReiserFS but I forgotten about the new (old) Disk5.

 

34 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

Does that mean getting another hard drive, on top of the recently added 8TB white (on which Disk 3 is being rebuilt)?

Yes, but if you think you have enough free space to copy everything off to other disks as you do the conversions you wouldn't have to.

 

A new larger disk, which would be rebuilt as an empty XFS disk in slot 2, would make it a lot simpler though since it would have enough capacity to take anything from the other disks.

 

If you try to use the free space on existing disks you might have to copy part of a disk to one and the rest to another for example.

 

If you had that other larger disk you might be able to copy most of the others and remove several of the smaller disks and not bother with converting them at all. I always say fewer disks means fewer opportunities for problems. And larger disks typically perform somewhat better due to increased density.

[trurl]

Since the rebuilt Disk3 will have a lot of capacity but not much space used yet, you could just copy the files from it to your other disks (except disk2), reformat it as XFS, then use it for getting the data off the other disks and then reformatting or removing them.

[French-Guy]

1 hour ago, trurl said:

This might be what you mean, but just to clarify, parity drive doesn't know anything about filesystems as already noted. Parity drive is NOT formatted as anything. What happened is when you put it in to a new slot as Disk5, Disk5 got formatted to the default filesystem which is XFS.

When I replaced my parity drive with a new larger one (8TB Red), the former parity drive (2TB) was reinstall in another bay and became Disk 5, and was formatted as xfs (one of my posts in the 2nd page) - And this is when I realized some were reiserfs vs xfs

 

34 minutes ago, trurl said:

Since the rebuilt Disk3 will have a lot of capacity but not much space used yet, you could just copy the files from it to your other disks (except disk2), reformat it as XFS, then use it for getting the data off the other disks and then reformatting or removing them.

I'm all for it...........So it means using unBALANCE (and making sure I'm not using Disk 2 of course)?

 

By the way....................................24.3% right now !

Edited November 25, 2018 by French-Guy

[trurl]

So if the plan is to not rebuild disk2 to a new disk, then after the rebuild of disk3 has been completed and verified you could New Config without disk2 and rebuild parity before continuing with the conversion to XFS. That way the bad disk2 would be out of the picture and no longer a risk.

 

And during the New Config you can rearrange the slots however you want so you could for example shift disk5 into the disk2 slot so you don't have any gaps. Or however.

 

Disk assignments aren't related in any way to where in the case the disks are installed, or what port they are connected to. Unraid looks at their serial numbers to keep them assigned to the right slots.

 

New Config is really just a way of resetting the disk assignments.

[French-Guy]

Well, I've ordered a 4TB Easystore for $73...........If it's a Red or White, I will keep it and then use it to replace Disk 2 (the Easystore are really easy to open)

But if it's a "basic" blue, I will probably return it, then I won't rebuild Disk2 to a new disk, and then have it "out of the equation" as you said

 

 

46% right now..........GUI says 7 hours 30 min before completion

 

[John_M]

It's only the 8 TB externals that use helium. Anything smaller will be a Blue (they used to use Greens). Who would accept a return once the enclosure has been opened?

[French-Guy]

I've read somebody checked the enclosure with CrystalDisk info, and it said "Blue". So if it's the case, I will return it right away without having to open it

Anyway, is a Blue disk for Data a bad choice?