I want to remove some drives from my RAID 5 FREENAS

phongle123 · April 10, 2018

I currently have 5x8TB Drives in RAID 5 and have discovered I'm never filling this up. So I decided I want to take out 2 drives, 1 to add to my PC and 1 for a future build.

I want to make it 3x8TB RAID 5 instead.

I'm in the process of transferring all the data from the NAS drives then I have to break up the volume? How do I break up the volume back to its individual drives after transferring my files? I have the option to detach and an option to scrub.

Is it possible to just configure it to remove a drive since it hasn't filled up enough capacity. I know that in RAID5 it writes on all five drives so it might not be possible.

Jarsky · April 10, 2018

So you've moved/copied all your data off?

Then go into "Storage" then highlight your ZPOOL (the top tier of your storage. Down the bottom there will be an icon with a red x for "Detach Volume",

It will give you a warning that all your data will be destroyed. Then you can remove any disks, you no longer want to use, and create your new vdev/zpool.

phongle123 · April 10, 2018

2 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

So you've moved/copied all your data off?

Then go into "Storage" then highlight your ZPOOL (the top tier of your storage. Down the bottom there will be an icon with a red x for "Detach Volume",

It will give you a warning that all your data will be destroyed. Then you can remove any disks, you no longer want to use, and create your new vdev/zpool.

Ah, thank you. I thought detach just meant that it was going to remove my RAID5 Volume without breaking it up.

Will give it a whirl once the transfer completes.

Jarsky · April 10, 2018

Heres more info on the detach volume option: https://doc.freenas.org/9.10/storage.html

In particular, because you're destroying everything - you'd just want to tick both the boxes when you detach.

jde3 · April 10, 2018

If your good to go and you got everything off.. you can also just zpool destroy poolname from the console.. that is a destructive total reformat so take care.

FreeNAS config might be confused by doing that however.