Upgrade existing disk AND add a new at the same time?

[Tweak3D]

Good morning, Just wanting to confirm something before I move forward and cause myself pain. I need to add a new drive and would like to also upgrade an existing drive. Can I do this in one motion (shutdown, add the new drive, replace the old drive, restart unraid with the array stopped, update the drive assignments and let it do its thing)? I am running a 2 drive parity, but would prefer to not be in an unsafe state during this upgrade, so thats why i'm checking here first. 

 

Since both new drives need to pre-clear first, I imagine that if I don't preclear on my own, both drives will do the mandatory 1 pass pre-clear and only the existing disk will require using the parity while that and the drive rebuild occurs. Is that correct? If I am incorrect here, no issues, I can run the add disk first and then upgrade disk separately, just trying to save some time as we all this process can take a while. thanks!

Edited March 2, 2020 by Tweak3D
typo

[Addy90]

I would definitely recommend to preclear both disks first, then when this is finished, you add the disk you want to add, then check if everything is up and running and THEN you replace your other disk and let it rebuild from parity.

The adding of the disk should only take a minute or so when it is precleared, but the replacement is what takes time because of the parity rebuild. This is why I would definitely do it in this order, then the downtime is at minimum, because during preclear, everything is up and running and during rebuild of replacement disk, the content is emulated and up and running.

 

Do not skip preclear of both disks for one run. Nothing is more painful than adding a disk or rebuilding a disk that crashes within hours because it was not tested first.

Edited March 2, 2020 by Addy90

[JorgeB]

3 hours ago, Tweak3D said:

Can I do this in one motion (shutdown, add the new drive, replace the old drive, restart unraid with the array stopped, update the drive assignments and let it do its thing)?

No, you can take the opportunity to connect the new drive at the same time but can only add it to the array later, after the rebuild is finished.

[Frank1940]

If you haven't done the preclear yet, be sure to update the Plugin and/or Docker before you start.  Both were updated today to fix a problem with some larger disks not having the proper preclear signature.