Replace unprecleared drives with precleared?

[zwolfinger]

Unraid Version 6.8.2

 

I initially installed Unraid without preclearing any of my drive (newbie mistake).  I happen to have exact replacements for all the drives, and I have used another host to preclear them.  

Any reason I SHOULDN'T replace the existing drives, which are about 85% full and passing all S.M.A.R.T. checks with the precleared drives?  Of course I would do this one at a time, let the data rebuild from parity, and then move to the next drive.

I imagine this is going to take some time (5 x 2TB SATA drives + 1 x 2TB Parity drive). 

 

Any thoughts on replacing the Parity drive first so that it's running on a precleared drive before being used to rebuild data?

 

[itimpi]

Why are you bothering unless you think there might be something wrong with the drives?  Pre-clearing a drive is never a requirement with Unraid.   The only reason for even bothering is to do a stress test of a (potentially) suspect drive.   I know some people like to do it on new drives as a confidence check but many people do not bother.

[zwolfinger]

Good point!  I've just been reading a lot about preclearing and felt like maybe I messed up using used drives without checking them from the start.

 

Sounds like I have precleared drives waiting in the wings in case one dies.  Of course, I could always throw them into an enclosure and increase my capacity.  I'd probably want to start upgrading to higher capacity drives in the event of a drive failure anyhow.

[itimpi]

5 hours ago, zwolfinger said:

Good point!  I've just been reading a lot about preclearing and felt like maybe I messed up using used drives without checking them from the start.

 

Sounds like I have precleared drives waiting in the wings in case one dies.  Of course, I could always throw them into an enclosure and increase my capacity.  I'd probably want to start upgrading to higher capacity drives in the event of a drive failure anyhow.

it might have been a good idea originally to pre-clear the used drives to test them before adding them to the array.   However if they are currently already added and functioning without error no point in doing it now.  
 

Having pre-cleared (I.e. tested) drives sitting on a shelf is a good idea.   Adding them to the server if they are not needed for space reasons is not such a good idea as you are simply increasing the likelihood of getting a drive failure by having more drives than needed installed and increasing power consumption on the server.