remove unused hard drive from 2 disk array?

[vcxpz]

Hey,
I have 3 WD Red HHDs (2x 8TB 1x 4TB) with 1 of the 8TB drives being parity. I bought the 2 8TB drives new and The 4TB drive was taken out a WD NAS, so 2 brand new ones and 1 old one (~3 Year Power on hours according to smart). As the 4TB drive is old and has 0% usage should I remove it from the array so there is only 1 disk and 1 parity? What if the 4TB drive silently fails then my main 8TB drive fails?

 

I have attached a SMART report of the ~3 Year old disk from what I see its healthy For Now

skynet-smart-20200426-2211.zip

Edited April 26, 2020 by vcxpz

[JorgeB]

If you don't need the extra space remove it, one less point of failure, also array writes can be faster since it's basically RAID1, but as long as you have system notifications enable and do regular parity checks it's unlikely to fail "silently".

[vcxpz]

19 hours ago, johnnie.black said:

If you don't need the extra space remove it, one less point of failure, also array writes can be faster since it's basically RAID1, but as long as you have system notifications enable and do regular parity checks it's unlikely to fail "silently".

thanks! From what you suggested i think i will leave it for now