Removing disks (consolidating) from array

[sdamaged]

Hi,

 

I'm looking to remove some smaller drives from my 16 bay array to free up bays for future larger drives. I assume i can copy the contents of the 4 x 4TB drives to the larger drives, and once those are empty, stop the array and remove them?  Then parity sync again

 

Is this best practice?

[JorgeB]

There are 2 options to shrink the array, both are described here:

https://wiki.unraid.net/Shrink_array

 

Also when copying contents make sure to copy from disk to disk, never from disk to share or share to disk.

[sdamaged]

Many thanks

[Gragorg]

I found the Unbalance plugin works very well for moving the files off the old drives to a disk or disks  of your choosing.  That way you can maintain parity the entire time with the "Clear Drive the Remove Drive" method.

Edited January 14, 2020 by Gragorg

[JorgeB]

20 minutes ago, Gragorg said:

That way you can maintain parity the entire time with the "Clear Drive the Remove Drive" method.

Unbalance is a good and easy option to move the data, but it doesn't "clear" a drive, like any other copy method used, empty drive ≠ clear drive.

[sdamaged]

Thanks guys, this looks straightforward enough, been using unraid for years so hopefully will be a breeze! (i'll be posting in a few days saying i've somehow lost my 97TB of data!_

[sdamaged]

Worked perfectly thanks. Was a bit nervewracking but no problems!