replacing HDD for dummies

[Tesq800]

Good evening to everyone, I hope you can help me. Some time ago I assembled a a nas, using freenas 9.10 and 5 spare HDDs; I configured it as a raid0 system (a bad choice with hindsight...). Now I need to replace one of the hdd (it has 2 bad sectors, and in addition I'd like to have more free space): in other words I need to copy the data contained in the old hdd to the new one and then replacing it. I'd like to know if there is a step-by-step tutorial for an unexperienced user like me, since I couldn't find any.

thanks

 

[joeschmuck]

I don't recall seeing any tutorial, the user manual has reasonable instructions on how to replace a hard drive but you will need an open SATA port. If you do not have an open SATA port then I don't see how you can replace the failing drive and have the data in-tact. You should copy off all the data you really want to keep and then build a proper pool like a RAIDZ2, or RAIDZ1 at a minimum.

 

[Arwen]

Unfortunantly FreeNAS is not as user friendly as other NAS operating systems. Many of us
use FreeNAS because of the data integrity available with ZFS. But, that does not stop people
from creating less than ideal NAS servers using FreeNAS.

@joeschmuck is correct, you NEED a free SATA port and disk slot in order to perform the
ZFS replacement when it's a stripped pool. Plus, if the 2 bad sectors impacted any files, they
need to be restored manually, (meaning by YOU, not ZFS).

Please note that ZFS stores multiple copies of MetaData, (like directory entries), even in a
stripped pool. Thus, it's possible to have a stripped ZFS pool that has many errors without
data loss. But it's extremely un-likely since the amount of MetaData is generally a tiny
fraction of the real data.

 

[joeschmuck]

@joeschmuck is correct, you NEED a free SATA port and disk slot in order to perform the
ZFS replacement when it's a stripped pool.

Holy Crap, I got something right today! Now I can tell my wife that I'm not always wrong :p

 

[Arwen]

Holy Crap, I got something right today! Now I can tell my wife that I'm not always wrong :p

But not modest :)

 

[Tesq800]

thanks to both of you for the replies, now I have a better overview of the situation. I'm sorry to insist on this topic, but my system has a free sata port (as a matter of fact I think there should be at least 5 of them), so theoretically the hdd could be replaced with minimal damage (the lost of data stored in bad sectors). Still, I can't find the procedure to achieve that (yes, I'm at THIS level of dummines ) . Could you please help me?

 

[gpsguy]

Download an offline copy of the docs using the link in my signature and search for the word "replace".

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I can't find the procedure

The documentation covers replacing drives to grow a pool, and within that it discusses the procedure you can use when you have a free port. You can follow the same procedure to replace a failing drive.