Best way to upgrade dual parity drives?

[matt31751]

Hi everyone, sorry if this has been asked before; I googled this question, and found some similar questions, but didn't find anyone discussing exactly the situation I'm in.

 

I have an Unraid server with 2x 10TB parity drives. I want to replace both of those drives with 2x 14TB drives, which are tested and ready to go. But I'm not sure what the best way to do it is.

 

Should I replace one drive at a time, and plan on rebuilding parity from scratch when I replace each drive? If I do that, will the other parity drive--the one that's not being replaced--still give me parity protection? Or does rebuilding parity in this scenario rebuild both parity drives? If I lose parity protection while replacing a single drive, it seems like I should just replace both parity drives at the same time.

 

I've also looked at the "Parity Swap Procedure" on the wiki (https://wiki.unraid.net/The_parity_swap_procedure), but it seems like that doesn't apply, since I'm not replacing any data drives. On the other hand, could I still copy existing parity information from my existing 10TB parity drives to my new 14TB drives, if all the drives are installed at the same time?

 

Just for background: I'm on Unraid 6.8.3. I do have a full backup of all data on this server, in case anything goes wrong, and I'm planning on pulling the old 10TB parity drives for use elsewhere when the whole procedure is done (not using them as data drives). I'm fine with a couple days of downtime while I do this, if necessary.

 

Thanks!

[JonathanM]

Just replace one at a time, the other parity drive will stay valid.

 

After you replace one, I'd do a correcting parity check before replacing the other, just as a verification that things went as planned. If you get anything other than exactly zero errors, stop, collect diagnostics before rebooting, and post the zip file here if you want help diagnosing things.

[matt31751]

9 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

Just replace one at a time, the other parity drive will stay valid.

 

After you replace one, I'd do a correcting parity check before replacing the other, just as a verification that things went as planned. If you get anything other than exactly zero errors, stop, collect diagnostics before rebooting, and post the zip file here if you want help diagnosing things.

Thanks! That's exactly what I wanted to know.

 

I'll give it a shot and will follow up if I encounter any issues.