Adding an External drive then shucking it?

[easyrider]

I ran out of space on my backup server. So I added an external WD elements drive to the pool over USB.

When the re-balancing is complete, and I remove one of the internal drives from the server slots to free it up, can I remove the WD drive from the enclosure and just fill the empty slot ?

Will drive pool still see the drive without the USB mini board attached once shucked?

At the moment my pool states the WD is external, once I remove it from the enclosure will it still be seen by the pool?

 

I hope this makes sense

 

Thanks

 

 

 

[insleys]

It depends on the controller used in the external drive housing.  I've found several times that drives formatted while in the enclosure do not show up as expected in Windows once shucked and connected directly to SATA.  

My advice is to shuck the drive first, reformat directly in your OS and then use.  This would be best whether you're intending to use Drivepool or not.

[Umfriend]

I agree with insleys but that only works if you have a SATA port available. As I understand it, OP does not have one. Now if you had a generic USB-Sata docking station (like https://www.ebay.com/itm/ORICO-External-Hard-Drive-Enclosure-USB-3-0-to-SATA-Docking-Station-For-2-5-3-5/163798204921?hash=item26232241f9:m:mLNj1jjGGMlm5uIFrqja3RQ), then it would work for sure.

[easyrider]

In the end I bought two external drives....I added one to the pool.

Rebalanced the pool

Removed the old 2TB  drive to free up a slot

Shuck 2nd external drive, format in windows , add to the pool and then remove the first external from the pool.