Question Adding bigger parity drive to UnRaid NAS (and converting old HDD to storage)

[rasdane]

Hi,

I am making some changes to my Unraid NAS , and would like to do a sanity check before I break something.
The NAS array consists of:

• 3 12TB HDDs for storage
• 1 12B HDD parity drive

Everything is working great, with no failures. But my case has room for 5 HDDs total… and I just bought a 16 TB drive from Prime Day.

I want to make the 16TB the new parity drive and convert the current 12TB from parity to storage. I am trying to plan the safest way to do this.

I don’t care if the array is off-line or not in the time it takes to make the changes. I just don’t want to lose any data!

Here’s my plan:

• Install the new HDD.
• Assign the 16TB as a second parity drive. Let it build.
• Once done, just “change” the 12TB assignment from Parity to storage.

… is it really that simple? What am I missing? Or is there an easier/faster/safer way of doing this?

Any advice is most appreciated.