Replacing all disks (array, flash and cache)

[JieKie]

Hi everyone,

 

It's my first post here, i've been using unraid for about half a year now and enjoying it. When i built the server i used a generic unbranded usb drive and a SSD with bad sectors. Not the best idea but i wanted to test unraid, had these laying around and now i'm stuck with these. I'm also running 6 6TB WD reds (1 parity) which i will be replacing with 8 12TB drives (shucked WD white label) (2 parity drives). I'm also looking into encrypting my data, but i'm still on the fence, it's mainly movies, shows, music and console games.

 

What would be the best course of action? Replace the flash drive and SSD and gradually rebuild the hard drives?

Or replace all drives, remove the config, add the old drives as unassigned drives and copy everything from the old hard drives to the new drives or maybe chuck them into my computer and transfer over the network? This way if something goes wrong i can rebuild the old setup.

I could also add encryption, not sure on this as its just mostly media.

 

my current setup:

Supermicro X10SL7-F

Intel® Core™ i3-4330

32 GiB DDR3 Single-bit ECC

generic unbranded 16Gb flash drive

CacheCorsair Force 3 SSD 120Gb with bad sectors as cache drive

6 x 6TB WD red (1 parity)

 

future setup:

sandisk cruzer mini 16Gb

2 x Samsung 860 QVO 1TB as cache raid 1

8 x 12TB WD white label (precleared) (2 parity)

 

For now i'm using the server as a NAS, but in the future i will experiment with dockers and vm's.

 

regards,

[trurl]

If your current flash is working I would just keep it. The SSD needs replacing of course and didn't have much capacity anyway. Upsize the disks one at a time starting with parity and as you need capacity.

[Vr2Io]

4 hours ago, JieKie said:

This way if something goes wrong i can rebuild the old setup.

If you mount data disk, then it will invalid the original parity, I am not sure mount as read-only can be avoid that.

 

4 hours ago, JieKie said:

I could also add encryption, not sure on this as its just mostly media.

If plan for encryption, then you can't expand disk by non-encrypt disk.

 

4 hours ago, JieKie said:

chuck them into my computer

Best do it local within Unraid, no much reason not that.

 

4 hours ago, JieKie said:

I'm also running 6 6TB WD reds (1 parity) which i will be replacing with 8 12TB

I properly won't do that, lat say you have 36TB data, I will use 5 12TB ( 2 parity and 3 data ), so three disk can use as spare or other purpose, or at least spare one disk for emergency fault disk replacement. Another reason is 12TB disk not always have good price.

 

I buy two 12TB and shuck, now as parity, the org. disk be spare for fault disk replacement, you never know which disk will got fault.

Edited July 26, 2020 by Benson