Hello,
It started as the subject said:
- goal was to replace all 10 disks in a R6
- context and perceived constraints
- soft raid (no imsm and or ddl containers)
- multiple disk partition. partitions across 10 disks formed R6
- downtime not an issue
- minimize the number of commands
- minimize disks stress
- reduce the time spent with this process
- difficult to add 10 spares at once in the rig
- after a reshape/grow from 6 to 10 disks offset of data in raid
members was all over the place from cca 10ksect to 200ksect
Approaches/solutions and critique
1- add one by one a 'spare' and 'replace' raid member
critique:
- seem to me long and tedious process
- cannot/will not run in parallel
2- add all the spares at once and perform 'replace' on members
critique
- just tedious - lots of cli commands which can be prone to mistakes.
next ones assume I have all the 'spares' in the rig
3- create new arrays on spares, fresh fs and copy data.
4- dd/ddrescue copy each drive to a new one. Advantage can be done one
by one or in parallel. less commands in the terminal.
In the end I decided I will use route (3).
- flexibility on creation
- copy only what I need
- old array is a sort of backup
Question:
Just for my curiosity regarding (4) assuming array is offline:
Besides being not recommended in case of imsm/ddl containers which (as
far as i understood) keep some data on the hardware itself
In case of pure soft raid is anything technical or safety related that
prevents a 'dd' copy of a physical hard drive to act exactly as the
original.
Thanks
Red
