TL; DR

My current parity drive is showing errors and is likely to fail soon.  I'd like to use a current data disk as a parity disk.  What's the best way to move the data off of that disk, get it out of the array as a data drive, and into the array as a parity drive?

 

More details:

 

Hi everyone,

 

I had a relatively new drive in my array fail on me.  Sending it in for a warranty replacement, but just after it failed, my parity drive started showing "Current pending sector" and "Offline uncorrectable" errors.  I have no idea what these mean, but Google says it's a good indication of failure coming soon.

 

I have more space than I'll ever use.  I used to use this for movies, but streaming and fast internet have basically eliminated that use.  So I don't expect my data to grow by a whole lot.  Having said that, I have a 3TB drive that only has 200GB of data currently on it.  I'd like to move that data off, remove that drive from the array, and turn that drive into my new parity drive.  I'll probably set it up as a second parity drive if my current parity drive is still ticking along after my array rebuilds the bad disk (currently happening).

 

What is the best way to remove data that is only located on this drive?  Is this article still relevant?  https://blog.linuxserver.io/2013/11/18/removing-a-drive-from-unraid-the-easy-way/  It would make me nervous to build a completely new config, but I guess I shouldn't lose any data if I don't make any mistakes.

 

Any thoughts on the best way to approach this?

 

Thanks!

Brandon

 

If the current parity is showing pending sectors it's possible (even likely) there are read errors during the rebuild, if notifications are disable check main page for errors, or post the diagnostics.

Hmmmm... That's disheartening.  I do have notifications enabled.  

 

When I check the raw read failure rate, it is elevated.  It's showing prefail at a value of 117.  

 

Does this mean the rebuilt data will be corrupted?

Brandon

Nevermind... I was looking at this wrong.  The read errors seem to be sky high based on the raw value.  Is that what I should be looking at?  Not entirely sure here.

 

Brandon

You should be looking at the error column on the main page, in doubt post the diagnostics.

Ah, ok.  Good news... 0 errors there.  

 

Brandon

Check when the rebuild finishes if it's still 0, though if you have system notifications enable you'll get notified.

 

As for the copy to remove the disk, you can use mc and move the data from that disk to another (not to an user share) or if you have disk shares enable you can also use Windows explorer, the copy/move will still be made locally, then new config, keep all assignments, unassign the now empty disk, assign it as parity and start the array to begin the parity sync.