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Replacing all drives in pool


dropshadow

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I have 8 drives which I purchased from Amazon 3 years ago. I have had SMART messages constantly for 2 days now stating imminent drive failure on 3 of the drives. When I tried to get the drives replaced under warranty, the manufacturer said my drives were fake, serials invalid. Lesson learned, don't buy from 3rd party on Amazon, heck, don't buy some things from Amazon period.

So now, I am worried since I have 8 drives that could fail and I don't trust them, so I want to replace all drives. I am running 8 x 4TB, at about 50% capacity. I have bought new 8 x 8TB. What is the easiest way for me to swap out all of the drives? Do I just do remove/add and wait for replication one by one? Is there a faster way to do this?

 

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In this case where you want it done asap, my bet for the fastest way is this:

Steps:

  1. Add the new drives to your pool without doing any balancing.
  2. Label all your old drives, maybe A-Old B-Old C-Old etc and the new drives A-New B-New etc  (A spreadsheet can help keep this organized)
  3. Stop the drive pool service, make sure you arent using any of the files.
  4.  Copy everything from the respective drive to the new drive (so for example, copy everything in the hidden folder PoolPart.[bunch of numbers and characters] in A-Old to PoolPart.[bunch of numbers and characters] in A-New).
  5. Once each drive has been copied over to the respective new drive, you can then recycle bin/delete the old drive data for poolpart (This is just copy, then delete instead of move), restart your computer and with it the Drivepool service will also restart and remeasure. 
  6. At this point, you may remove the old drives using the in built removal action, and as the old drives will be basically empty, it should take no time.

The whole process vs the remove button should, from my experience, be much faster though much more hands on (as the remove button involves no spreadsheet or service stopping).

Just so you know how I've come up with this, its based on this line of reasoning I've seen a few times in responses:

There was a better post about this including the bit about stopping the service just to be on the safe side, so I recommend searching for something along those lines, but thats the best way I can think of without having to wait for the slower removal process.

That being said, of course this isn't the way its designed to work and if you're really worried about that data, apart from suggesting you make a backup just in case, I also might recommend you wait till @Christopher (Drashna) responds here as obviously he knows better than anyone responding most likely.

 

 

Another method I just thought up is simply cloning the drives over since you have 4 new ones and 4 old ones. Each drive would just get cloned to a newer drive. No data loss, no speed issues. The reason I suggested the above is because Ive myself just moved things into the poolpart folder before whereas Im not sure of the behaviour of drivepool with cloned drives (Whether or not itll pick them up as being the same drive or if youll need to add the new drives into the same pool for instance). I should think all youd do is after cloning without drive pool, remove the old drives from the computer, insert the new ones and have drivepool see the new pool, but like I said, Im unsure of that method so its why in order of most recommended to least, id suggest: 

  1. Waiting for the response of the person Ive referenced 
  2. Trying the first thing I suggested (after making sure backups you have are up to date preferably)
  3. Simply using the remove action built in
  4. Trying the third option listed that Im unsure about.

I'm sorry I have no 100% confidence replies but hopefully I gave you some info that helps in at least finding the best solution for you.

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Actually, cloning is not best practice. Christopher has mentioned a number of times that DP does not deal with cloned HDDs well.

Wrt. stopping the service and moving the contents of poolpart folders, this makes, to my mind, sense only in the case where you move files on the same HDD. Cases could be (a) you have data on a HDD that is outside a Pool while the HDD is part of a Pool or (b) when you start hierarchical pools and want to move from a lower level to a higher level pool.

In your case, it depens on whether you have additional ports available. If you do, connect as many new HDDs as you can, add them to the Pool, then remove the/some older HDDs (through the UI) and let DP do its magic. Rinse and repeat for additional HDDs. If you do not have ports available, then remove a couple of old HDDs first, add new ones and the procedure is the same.

FWIW, it is better not to buy a whole set of new HDDs at one time. The reason for this is that they will have identical wear and tear and failure is expected to be more simultaneously. Replacing HDDs over time spreads out issues over time.

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10 hours ago, Umfriend said:

In your case, it depens on whether you have additional ports available. If you do, connect as many new HDDs as you can, add them to the Pool, then remove the/some older HDDs (through the UI) and let DP do its magic. Rinse and repeat for additional HDDs. If you do not have ports available, then remove a couple of old HDDs first, add new ones and the procedure is the same.

FWIW, it is better not to buy a whole set of new HDDs at one time. The reason for this is that they will have identical wear and tear and failure is expected to be more simultaneously. Replacing HDDs over time spreads out issues over time.

I have the 8 drives, all dedicated to a single pool, no data outside of the pool, all hooked up to a supermicro 8 channel SATA card. I should have a few free USB ports on the motherboard itself, so I will connect as many new HDs as I can, add to pool, wait for the "magic" and then remove old HDs. Rinse, repeat, until I have replaced all the drives. That sounds like what I thought I would have to do.

Thanks for the advice on not buying a whole new set of HDs at once. That makes sense. I'll keep that in mind in the future.

Appreciate everyone's advice. Will start tonight.

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You're welcome.

Once you added new HDDs to the Pool, you can start removing (through the UI that is, physical removal comes later :D) right away.

You are going to replace all 8 HDD's, filled at 50% -> 16TB to transfer. And you will incur addional I/O due to the balancing. Come to think of it, once you have added some new HDDs to the Pool, it should remeasure and, possibly, rebalance. There is an X to the right of the bar. Press it. It will leave files where they are, which is good for now. Then remove (through UI) the first set of discs and, if you have more new TB than required, all of them. Then switch physical HDDs, add the new new (yes) HDDs to the Pool and you would only have one balancing pass.

I think.

Anyway, 16TB will take a while.

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