RAID-5 Upgrade. Best Practice.

[arash82]

I have a RAID-5 with 4x4 TB drives. One of them died. I thought putting in larger disk while at it and am considering two approaches: 

1. Add a 16 TB to current system, rebuild, and the one by one replace the other three drives. Finally extend.

2. Create a new 4x16 TB array and copy the data.

What is best practice, what do people recommend, and are the pros/cons with each approach?

Thanks!

[Cali]

Hi,

1. Add a 16 TB to current system, rebuild, and the one by one replace the other three drives. Finally extend.

> This needs a lot of time. Not Hours, talking about Days or Weeks. SATA Rebuild is slow. And there is a high-risk Potential of losing a second Drive while rebuilding. Because this generate a high load on the remaining Drives.
But it works.

2. Create a new 4x16 TB array and copy the data.

> Risk-free and faster. But maybe a problem if you have a boot Volume in the R5.

Cali

[SanjeevGoyal]

Hello,

1. Add a 16 TB to the current system, rebuild, and the one by one replace the other three drives. Finally, extend.

If you add 16TB hard disks insist of 4TB hard disk, Raid configuration considers only 4TB hard disk size not 16TB. This means you will lose 12TB hard disk space.

2. Create a new 4x16 TB array and copy the data

Yes, this is the best option. Take the complete data backup and recreate the raid again. After that restore the data from the backup.

 Please let me know for further assistance.

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Regards,

[SanjeevGoyal]

Hello,

I hope, I am able to resolve your query.

Please let me know if you have any other queries.

I will be happy to assist you.

If you feel this was helpful please click the KUDOS! thumb below!   

Regards,