Replacing disks help

[yrune]

Hi, first time user here. Short story, my qnap nas died on me and since I had some server grade hardware I figure I would try unraid.

 

So I installed unraid and it seems to serve my needs fine.

I set it up with following drives:

1-  2TB parity disk

1-  60GB ssd cache

2-  1TB data

1-  500GB data

 

I passed through one of the extra raid controller to a linux VM and recovered my important qnap data so I could copy it to the unraid.

Now that this is done I'm going to bring the controller back to unraid and use the disks there, at the same time remove the 500GB disk, because it's rather old.

So now I have extra:

1-  4TB disk

3- 3TB disk

 

I assume the setup now should be 

1- 4TB = parity

1- 3TB = parity

1- 60GB ssd cache

2- 3TB data

2- 1TB data

1- 2TB data (previously parity)

 

I don't really care about the amount of storage, security is most important. 3-4TB of storage should suit my needs for a long time. Would I be better off having some of the disks offline/spin down as spares ?

 

But how to I go about doing this and at the same time keep my data ?

[trurl]

One disk at a time.

 

Replace parity with 4TB disk and let it rebuild.

 

With so few drives it may be debatable whether you really need parity2, but we can discuss that while parity is rebuilding.

[trurl]

Also, go to Tools - Diagnostics and attach the complete diagnostics zip file to your next post so we can take a look at the health of these disks.

[yrune]

oh, I thought I had to wait 24 hours for my next post. That was painful 

 

ok, I ran the diagnostics, but currently the "qnap" disks are still in the VM and not visible since the whole controller is passed through. And I rather not reboot yet, because I'm running a backup from a slow offsite that I don't want to abort. 

 

But I'm really interested in knowing why there is no need for second parity. As I said, I don't need the space, nor is speed a issue, what I want is added security. 

 

oh, and I forgot. Thank you for your input thus far

 

Edited May 10, 2019 by yrune

[trurl]

parity2 is a little extra insurance, it's more important that all disks are healthy though. I only have 5 data disks and I have dual parity, but I mostly decided to do that so I would have some experience with dual parity. Also, my media collection isn't growing much these days and I don't need the capacity either.

 

Go ahead and post those diagnostics if you want, or wait. If you aren't seeing any SMART warnings in the Dashboard then the disks are probably fine.

[yrune]

There where some warnings when I first setup unraid, but I confirmed them and no new has showed up for the past 2 weeks. The parity disk have been giving heat warning though during heavy copy operations.

I upload diagnostic for now, and run again when all disks are in place.

serenity-diagnostics-20190510-2136.zip

[trurl]

Yes you should work on your cooling. Not only is parity always going to be involved when writing the array, but all your disks will be even more heavily used during rebuilds and parity checks.

 

Disk1 has 2 pending. Ideally these would become reallocated but until they are they could be a problem for rebuilding other disks. I think this is a disk you intend to replace anyway, and it should be the first to go after you get larger parity in place, maybe even before getting parity2.

 

Other disks look OK, but of course there are other disks still to be diagnosed.

[yrune]

Ok, so I replaced the parity disk, it's rebuilding now. When that is done I should replace the disk I'm trashing and let it rebuild.

And I've concluded I will add a second parity since I don't need the space.

so steps should be

1. rebuild parity

2. replace old "failing" drive

3. add second parity

4. add remaining drives

 

Is there a way to influence what drives unraid prefer using ? It might be smart enough on it's own because the first I added (the old one) is barely used, then it filled the next to 50% and moved on. The drives I original set up with are normal desktop drives, while the ones I added now are NAS drives. So I'd prefer if the NAS drives where the ones on top of priority list.

 

Thank you for your input, it has been excellent !

The diagnostics for the "new" drives seems fine

serenity-diagnostics-20190511-1045.zip

Edited May 11, 2019 by yrune
EDIT: Added diagnostics

[trurl]

1 hour ago, yrune said:

Is there a way to influence what drives unraid prefer using

There are settings for each user share which helps unraid decide which disks to use for new files for that user share. Turn on Help.

[trurl]

1 hour ago, yrune said:

The diagnostics for the "new" drives seems fine

yes