Reducing number of drives in array by adding larger drives

[MrLondon]

I have currently dual parity and 14 array drives however I plan to replace 2x4tb and a 3tb drive with 2x10tb so I’m trying to figure out how to do this without running 3x parity rebuilds. I wonder if I should move all data off the 3tb drive to the array but I’m not sure if I could then just do a new config leaving all but this drive in the position and then replace the 2 other drives and do a parity rebuild or is that logic wrong?

 

 

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[itimpi]

That would be the fastest and easiest approach, but the array would be unprotected against another drive failing until the parity rebuild completes.

[MrLondon]

so which is the safest approach without doing 3 parity rebuilds?

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, MrLondon said:

so which is the safest approach without doing 3 parity rebuilds?

The only safe approach is 3 rebuilds, so you have to decide whether speed/convenience matters more than the (probably unlikely) chance of array disk failing while rebuilding parity.   Do you have backups if this happens (you should have ).

[MrLondon]

I have a 100tb array... so you can image that most data is not protected by a backup. My most important files (pictures and documents are backup on 3 locations. Would moving data from the 3tb to clear it and then replace that together with another one would be safer?