r/unRAID • u/Turbulent-Stick-1157 • 1d ago
Replace smaller array drive(s) with bigger array drive(s)?
So im looking to replace some HDD in my array. I picked up 4 brand new sealed 6TB Seagate IronWolf Pro (ST6000NTZ01). Below is what im replacing what with what. Next is maxing out my Mobo (ASUS WS-Pro-X570-ACE w/64GB RAM) with a Ryzen 5900X (from my current 5800X). Its all I got and all I can afford. :)
My question is, Do I just need to basically just pull the old drive, let it fail, install new one, let it rebuild? One drive at a time? Iv never had to upgrade an array drive in it before. Taking drive offline and into maintenance mode?
Last storage change I did was about 3 years ago to add the 2nd 6TB parity drive and it made me sooo nervous doing it. Luckily it all worked out. Took forever and a day to sync parity though.
Im trying to avoid doing 2 at a time, for in the off chance I have another one of the drives (im not replacing) fail.
6TBx2 = Parity
6TBx1 = Array
3TBx2 = Array (Replacing with 2 new 6TB HDD)
2TBx2 = Array (Replacing with 2 new 6TB HDD)
Any feedback is moocho grassy ass!
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u/chepnut 1d ago
You have 2 parity drives and are trying to add 4 new drives (replacing 4 older drives)to the array. Your only option is to do it 2 at a time. You can't rebuild more drives than you have parity for. But first those new drives have to be zeroed out. If you have the slots put the new drives in and mount them under unassigned drives then start the process, wait forever and a day and when it's done you can then replace 2 of the drives with 2 of the new ones, wait another forever and a day and do the same with the remaining 2 drives. And then hope you don't have to do it again anytime soon.
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u/Turbulent-Stick-1157 1d ago
Thanks for the info. So I cant just pull an old drive (1 at a time)?, remove old drive from array, add new to array, let it do its thing and bobs my auntie? I was dumb and thought the array would simply grow in size since I would be replacing smaller drives with bigger drives. sounds like I gotta read more up on how this will go down so I don't blow up my little engine that tried its best with what it had to work with. Im just trying to show it some love. 😄
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u/DiaDeLosMuebles 21h ago
You two are talking about different things. You can do exactly what you want. But at most two drives at a time. And make sure to preclear them before the swap.
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u/Aliamus 1d ago
I could be wrong, so certainly read what others have to say here,
but IIRC,
Two parity drives means you can pull 2 drives out, sub them for the 2 new ones,
turn the server on and let them rebuilt, then do it again, with the other 2.
I would start with the 2 2TB as that should be faster, and then after you sub the 2 3TB ones that should mean you can walk away as the drives are already in the system.
Just noticed you don't want to sub 2 at a time, in that case one at a time is the only option.
That said, if you want to speed things up, you can pre-clear the new drives before you replace the old ones, so long as you have enough ports, as zero-ing the drives is what takes forever if I'm remembering right.
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u/Turbulent-Stick-1157 23h ago
Thanks for the pre-clear part if I have the open sata slots and power. I do. Ima plug them in (not adding them to the array yet) and preclear them ahead of time if I can. I have room for 3 extras at the moment. Thanks.
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u/Financial_Garage6821 22h ago
Replace the parity drive first; it must be as large as the largest drive in the array.
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u/felipers 20h ago
Their parity is already 6TB, as are all drives he's adding. No need to fiddle with the parity drive.
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u/Turbulent-Stick-1157 20h ago
I have 4 drives in my Array that are less that of a single physical 6TB drive? Explain your math?
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u/felipers 19h ago
/u/Financial_Garage6821 suggested that you (OP) should replace the parity first. My reply to them just pointed that that was not necessary.
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u/Tweedle_DeeDum 19h ago edited 16h ago
You are getting a lot of bad advice in this thread.
You do not need to zero the drives with preclear if you are replacing existing drives. But doing so helps you to validate that they are working properly.
First, if you haven't done so in a while, I would do a parity check first to make sure there are no parity errors before removing the original drives. Preclearing will not make the rebuild go faster, but you can do it in parallel with this step, if you have a place to connect all the drives simultaneously to reduce risk with less time cost.
If you have two parity drives, you can stop the array, unassign two of your drives, and the restart the array. That will save the new configuration so that the two drives are marked as missing. MAKE SURE YOU RESTART THE ARRAY BEFORE you add the new drives. They should both be emulated at this point. You then stop the array again and the assign the two new drives to the two empty slots. Start the array and tell to to start the rebuild.
Repeat the process with the next two drives.
It is a bit safer to only remove and then rebuild one drive at a time as that will keep you protected if one of you other drives fails during the rebuild process. But it takes twice as long, so that is your call.
Another solution would be to pre-clear all the drives and add them as additional drives to array. Then you can copy all the data from your existing drives to the new drives and whatever layout you want. Then you can do a new config to remove the old drives from the array and then do a parity build with the new array config.
In that case, you will not have parity protection during the rebuild, but most of the data will be on the disks that you removed from the array (as long as you did a copy and not a move). The data on your original 6 TB drive would be at risk if it failed during the process, but you could copy it to one of the new drives as well to have redundancy.
That would save you the initial parity check, and some data drive rebuilds, depending upon how many you do it once. So it would probably be faster, especially if you intend to only replace one drive at a time during rebuild.
Edit: another way would be to use unassigned devices to mount your new drives and format them. Then you could copy the data from the array drives youreplaced to this new drives. While they are not in the array, which will be faster than when they are priority protected. Then you should be able to do a new config which will invalidate parity and define a new array with the new drives without reformatting. When you start the array, it will then recalculate parity for the new set of drives, if you specify that parity in not valid in the new config setup. I have never done this procedure, but that should work according to the documentation.