UnRAID array rebuild with less drives

Bluecube

Bluecube

Bluecube

Soldato
Joined
20 Feb 2011
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I currently have an unRAID server with five 2Tb hard drives for storage. I added a 6Tb parity drive and have removed one of the 2Gb drives and added another 6Tb drive. An array rebuild is now in progress. All good there (so far - touch wood, etc)

I will be adding a further two 6Tb drives over the next couple of days. The whole idea is to move from 5x2Tb to 3x6Tb (plus the parity drive of course). However's it dawned on me that I'm going to have 2x2Tb that are still part of the array with data on them. How do I ensure the data is on the next drives? Remove them one by one with an array rebuild after each removal?

TIA
 
UnRAID spreads data across multiple drives like a RAID configuration. While the drives can be read individually, I’m not sure if it’s possible to move data between drives... I’m going to look into this further though as it’d make a big difference time-wise if it’s possible.
 
You can use the unbalance plugin to move the data to the drives you want, then run New Config and re-create it with just the drives you want to use.

Unlike a normal RAID system, you can do this without any data loss and the data isn't striped over different drives.
 
ubern00b said:
If I recall correctly you can eject a disk from an array which will initiate a migration of the data on the disk to other disks on the array.

https://wiki.lime-technology.com/Shrink_array
Click to expand...

Eject in software as opposed to physically removing it? Because I completely removed the first disk and replaced it with the 6Tb drive. Parity is being rebuilt right now so I assumed the missingdata is being added to the new drive? You’ve got me a bit worried now!

PiKe - thanks for that info. Sounds ideal! I’ll look into that.
 
Bluecube said:
Eject in software as opposed to physically removing it? Because I completely removed the first disk and replaced it with the 6Tb drive. Parity is being rebuilt right now so I assumed the missingdata is being added to the new drive? You’ve got me a bit worried now!

PiKe - thanks for that info. Sounds ideal! I’ll look into that.
Click to expand...
Yes, eject in software. The way you are doing it is correct as it is rebuilding from parity however at the moment you are just replacing drives for larger versions. You want to consolidate a drive or two so need to move the data from those drives onto one of the other drives so you can't just remove the disk and have it rebuild from parity. PiKe's solution is bang on actually.
 
Ugh. Wonderful... I’ll have to see how this parity rebuild has gone before I can do anything else. It does sound as if I’ve made a boo boo.
 
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