Just looking for some advice about replacing a disk in my NAS. I have 2 3TB disks in X-Raid (Raid 5) 1 of the disks is showing an increasing number of SMART errors and I need to replace the disk. However my concern is that if I pull the affected disk to replace it will the array remain intact. Or will I have to add a disk let the array re-build with 3 disks then replace the faulty disk?
Is the volume redundant? Check the volume tab in front view. If it is then you don't have a raid 5 volume. Xraid effectively uses raid 1 with 2 disks, then with 3 or more disks raid 5 ( or raid 6 if dual redundancy is selected with 4 or more disks.) Have you always had only 2 disks in Xraid? If you have a redundant volume then you can pull the bad disk and hot insert a new disk. The data is on the other disk and the volume will then resync and recreate a raid 1 redundant volume.
Please, please make sure you have a backup first. The resync puts extra load on the other disk and if this is your only copy of the data, you are taking too much risk.
I have checked and the Volume tab says Redundant and the configuration is: RAID Level X-RAID2, 2 disks. I have only ever ran it with 2 disks so far but do want to expand it in the not too distant future. Also it's reporting the following firmware version: RAIDiator 4.2.26.
So my understanding is backup the data to be safe and then I should be able to just hot swap the disk.
Yes I would make sure your backup is up to date, then hot swap the faulty disk for the new one.
It's during events like this where people unfortunately come unstuck when things go wrong. You should always keep backups of your data, not just when things like this happen.
I have the data backed up but it's about 1 month out of date and to be honest only 1 file has changed. But as I have been stung before I know it's better to be safe than sorry. Thanks for the help.
