Drive upgrades without dataloss


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Good Morning all

 

So I use my unraid server for basically docker containers and a backup target.

 

Below shows my current usage, I have no more physical space in my server to install new drives, and have no additional SATA/SAS ports either.

I want to upgrade all of the drives (with the exception of the cache) to 10tb drives. 

How would i go about swapping all of these drives out without data loss?


image.thumb.png.e5144c3c58d44464cc7aaef1f3142915.png

 

Any help would be really appreciated.

 

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Follow the standard procedure for replacing disks.   With 2 parity drives you could do 2 drives at a time.   You will need to do the parity disks first as no data drive is allowed to be larger than the smallest parity drive.   

 

i would recommend keeping the disk being replaced intact until you are happy the replacement has gone OK as that gives you some recovery options if it has gone wrong.

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It looks pretty straight forward.

 

Shutdown > Replace one parity drive > Restart > Assign new drive > Let unraid rebuild.

Shutdown > Replace second parity drive > Restart > Assign new drive > Let unraid rebuild.

Shutdown > Replace one non parity drive > Restart > Assign new drive > Let unraid rebuild > Repeat until all drives are upgraded.

 

During this process i'm assuming that i cannot use any of my dockers is that correct?

All of my dockers are running on my cache drives. > These will not be replaced.

 

Is there anyway i can continue to use my dockers during the rebuild process?

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41 minutes ago, karldonteljames said:

During this process i'm assuming that i cannot use any of my dockers is that correct?

Incorrect. The server should still be fully functional, just sluggish for anything involving data on the array disks, and any utilization will prolong the rebuilds, sometimes drastically if something is continually writing to the parity protected array.

 

But you can still use everything.

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That's fine, I'll stop my backup form running for a couple of days, that isn't a huge issue, not taking many pictures at the moment anyway.

 

I don't think the cache is protected by the parity, (I have two cache drives so i think they protect each other? And all of my docker appdata is running from there.)

So i can't see that it will make a huge difference.

 

One other question. I ran some advanced tests on my unraid server using fix common problems, and it has detected multiple duplicate files across a few of the drives, is it possible to automatically remove the duplicates? 

 

I've tried to run dupeGuru, but it seems to lock up and not report anything.

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  • 4 weeks later...

All Went without a with hitch. All drives replaced upgraded. I did one drive at a time, (I know I could have probably did two at once, but wanted to play it safe) 

Each new 10tb drive took about 22 hours to rebuild, so all in took a little over a week to replace all eight drives.

 

The only other question i had was about automatically removing duplicates.

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