Discussing how to swap out drives in Unraid
Discussing how to swap out drives in Unraid
Hi, I understand the situation with your Unraid server and the failed drive. You're considering replacing it with a new 12TB BarraCuda Pro drive. You're curious about setting up the new drive as the parity drive or using the existing one. Since previous attempts were tricky, you're looking for a straightforward method now. The screenshot you mentioned is helpful—please keep the IDs private if needed. Thank you for reaching out!
I plan to keep the new 12TB unparityed right now because the array is damaged. It would be better to use it as a data drive temporarily so the array can recover quickly. You'll also need a secondary larger drive to add more usable space, which means parity won't matter at this stage—you'll wait for the bigger drive to provide additional capacity.
Start by fixing the failed drive first; skipping this risks losing your data. You must address it before moving on to other drives. To preserve the 12TB drive for parity, you may need an additional 6-8TB unit. After restoring the array, you can replace the parity drive during rebuild, though you'll be without protection until then. For better reliability, especially with many disks, adding a second parity drive is recommended so simultaneous failures don’t cause data loss.