best way to replace a pool disk

[amanteka]

hi!

i have a Sans Digital TR8U+ 8-bay case with (2) 3TB HDDs and (5) 1TB HDDs (space 10TB with 1.85TB of free space). i'm planning to replace all the 1TB HDDs with 3TB HDDs, any advice on how to do it? since any of the files are NOT duplicated, i think that i need to insert (1) 3TB HDD to the remaining bay, add to the pool, use the remove option on one of the 1TB HDD and wait to DrivePool to copy all the files, then repeat the process until all the (5) 1TB HDDs are replaced? how much time it will take just to replace one drive using a windows 7 64-bit pc with 16GB RAM and i7-2600 3.40GHz intel CPU when the PC is constanly using the pool?

thanks for all your answers!

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Yeah, that sounds about right. 

 

Though... if you have the one bay open... once that disk is added to the pool, you should have enough free space to move data out of 3-4 of the 1TB drives at once. i'd recommend using the "File Placement Limiter" balancer to clear the other 1TB disks (by opening that balancers settings and unchecking both "duplicated" and "unduplicated"' options for the disks  in question). This will clear out the disks as well, making it super quick to remove the drives.

As for how long, that dependds on the system, but probably a few hours at least per disk... unless you use the balancer method I recommended (well, it will take that long or longer to remove the disks... but you can let that run overnight so the actual removal process is seconds)

[amanteka]

thanks for your suggestions! next weekend i'll be working with this

[Christopher (Drashna)]

You're very welcome.

 

In the mean while, you could set up the balancer to do that. Or maybe move out unduplicated data from the disks... or even fully remove one disk from the Pool. 

But either way, the File Placement Limiter balancer is a good way to prep a drive for removal.