How to replace/wipe a disk

[OBRI]

Hi,

my Freenas machine has one HDD, where an error in SMART occured.
I want to change that drive, but first I want to wipe it. (It still has guarantee and I have to send it back)

I'm confused how to do that.

• When I first set the drive to OFFLINE, is it possible to wipe the disk AFTER that?
• When I wipe the disk while it is as RAID 1 drive part of A ZFSPOOL, I'm afraid, that I delete all the data of the entire Pool

But what is the right way to do it?

Thanks in advance

System is: FreeNAS-11.1-U4

obri

 

[kdragon75]

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/replacing-a-failed-failing-disk.75/

 

[OBRI]

The linked document is very clear and written very well.

But my main question is not answered.

Can I wipe the disk, after I set the disk offline? Or must I do this before taking the disk offline?
The documentation tells nothing about this.

 

[sretalla]

If you can see the disk in the storage section under disks after you offline it (should be the case), you will have a Wipe button available when it's selected... is that not the case for you?

Maybe it would help to consider that the action to offline a disk from a pool doesn't make it invisible to the operating system, so you could also work with it in gpart if you wanted to do something more specific than the GUI wipe options offer.

 

[OBRI]

Yes, but I have no idea if the wipe button will be there, after taking the disk offline.....?
And when I wipe the disk, is that really only wiping the ONE disk. I don't want to kill my Data (RAID 1) on the other disk.

 

[sretalla]

Yes and yes.

In both cases you can always go to the command line if you want more certainty.

The buttons on the GUI will only do what they say and you will be asked to confirm destructive activities.

 

[kdragon75]

When you offline a disk in FreeNAS, this offlines the disk in ZFS only. The disk will still be visible to the system like any disk. You will be able or need to wipe it before it can be reused. Sorry about the confusion.

 

[OBRI]

OK, I got it.
Thanks a lot!