Pool full, best way to upgrade HDD to larger drives?

[sprtfan]

I'm sure this has been answered before but wasn't having much luck with my searches.  My pool is little over 7tb and I only have 115gb of space left.  Most of the data is duplicated.  I want to replace 2 of the 1.5tb drives with 3tb drives.  I do not have any available space on the motherboard to add the drives directly.  Could I add the new drives via USB or esata, add it to the pool?  At this point I could select the drives I want to remove and there would be enough space to move the data off of them before taking them out.  Could I then move the externally connected drive into the case? Would I be better off selecting a drive to remove and having the data just not be duplicated while it is removed and then add the larger drive?

I guess what I'm asking is what is the best way to increase the space of my pool in this situation? Thanks 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

If most of the data is duplicated, that actually makes things easy.

 

Remove the drive, and select the "Duplicate data later". This removes only the unduplciated data form the drive, which means it should complete much faster (depending on your disks).  It will attempt to reduplicate the data after you've done this though. So power down the system (if needed), and replace the removed drive.  Once you've done that, it will reduplicate the data to the new drive, and fill it up.

 

After that first disk is done, you can attempt to repeat, but it may take longer. In this case, it would be better to use the "Drive Placement Limiter" balancer, and uncheck "duplicated" and "unduplicated" for one of the disks. This will cause the balancing system to clear out the drive.  Once it's empty, you can remove the disk quickly, and replace the drive.  Then you can repeat this, and swap out all of the drives (or as many as you need/want to).

 

 

 

That said, you could absolutely use eSATA here. It should have no problems moving the disk internally afterward.

As for USB, this depends entirely on the USB controller for the external.  You'd want to test it out first, to make sure it's not doing anything weird with the disk.