Shrink larger drive to fit in the array?


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I've found an external drive that I want to put into my unraid server. It's larger than my parity drive, it's 8tb vs my current 6tb parity. It  has 10,000 hours on time and 90tb written and i've had it for about 4 years. It's also 5400rpm so I don't think i could trust it as my parity drive?

 

So... is it possible to shrink and let unraid only see 6tb out of the 8tb of the drive so it'll fit in my array under my 6tb parity drive? Or could I trust this drive in my server?

 

Edited by jmmrly
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5 hours ago, jmmrly said:

So... is it possible to shrink and let unraid only see 6tb out of the 8tb of the drive so it'll fit in my array under my 6tb parity drive? Or could I trust this drive in my server?

Not practical to shrink it. As long as it passes a long self test and the SMART numbers look good, I'd use it as the parity drive.

 

All drives in the parity array are needed to rebuild a failed disk, the only thing special about the parity drive is that it contains no data, so if it fails, no loss. If a data drive fails, all the other data drives must be read perfectly along with the parity drive to recreate the failed drive. So, I'd much rather have a failed parity drive than a failed data drive. Less risk.

 

5 hours ago, Spies said:

It will do that anyway, no special procedure is needed.

You can't put a data drive larger than either of the parity drives in the parity protected array.

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10 hours ago, jonathanm said:

Not practical to shrink it. As long as it passes a long self test and the SMART numbers look good, I'd use it as the parity drive.

 

All drives in the parity array are needed to rebuild a failed disk, the only thing special about the parity drive is that it contains no data, so if it fails, no loss. If a data drive fails, all the other data drives must be read perfectly along with the parity drive to recreate the failed drive. So, I'd much rather have a failed parity drive than a failed data drive. Less risk.

 

You can't put a data drive larger than either of the parity drives in the parity protected array.

Alright, I'll just go for it as the parity drive. Thanks

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