Hey all,

Looking at upgrading a couple of drives in my array. They had a previous use before so they do need to be precleared. I have a 2-parity system so I’m not terribly worried about something going wrong as a whole, but I am very worried about me doing something stupid.

I’m looking to follow this guide: https://flemmingss.com/replacing-a-data-drive-in-unraid/

I’d also like to maximize uptime because I have family who uses some of my self hosted services.

Anyway, my plan is:

  1. Stop the array

  2. Select “no device” on the drive I want to remove

  3. Start the array in maintenance mode

  4. Shutdown and remove the drive

  5. (This is where I get fuzzy), should I install the new drive, boot and preclear, or something else?

  6. Boot the server

  7. Assign the new drive

  8. Start array in normal mode, should autostart the rebuild process

Thoughts? Confirmation? Thanks folks

  • @FribbtasticEnglish
    2•2 years ago

    I think you are doing too many unnecessary steps. First, you don’t need to actively set the drive in your array to “no device”, if the drive isn’t detected it will be emulated and be reported as “missing” anyway. I also think that you don’t really need the whole step of enabling maintenance mode.

    I would also recommend doing a pre-clear first before adding the system. I specifically bought an external USB drive case for that (UGreen USB 3.0 external HDD case) so that I can check the drives first without having to shut down the server.

    That means:

    1. pre-clear the drive
    2. set your array to not start on boot
    3. shutdown server
    4. replace the drive in the system with the pre-cleared one
    5. boot server
    6. set the missing drive to the new one
    7. start the array

    this will then start all services as well as start the rebuilding process of the new drive.

    • @ToylerrrEnglish
      1•2 years ago

      This is the correct way, I’ve done it in the past.

  • @NogamiEnglish
    1•2 years ago

    It’s even easier.

    • Stop array
    • remove old drive (as soon as you pull the drive it will disappear from the array slots if you have a hot-swap capable chassis). If not hot-swap you’ll need to power-down and restart.
    • install new drive
    • set new drive to old drive’s slot
    • Start array and let it rebuild

    No need to worry about maintenance mode and such. Pre-clearing isn’t necessary for upgrading drives that will be re-built with parity (some people do as a drive-test, but it’s not strictly necessary).

    Done.