Data drive failure - replace with new drive larger than parity drive?

[Helge Philipp]

Since yesterday, one of my data drives has been acting up, right after re-installing ESXi on this machine. Coincidence or not, it needs to be replaced.

My current setup is as follows:

Disk1 3TB Data1
Disk2 3TB Data2 <- broken drive
Disk3 3TB Parity
Disk4 2TB Data3

As 3TB drives are more expensive here than larger drives, I would like to replace the broken 3TB drive with a larger one, 4 or 6TB possibly. How would I then proceed? Ultimately, the newer, larger drive should be the parity drive, but I do not have the spare space to copy erverything.
Is it possible to have a data drive larger than the parity drive? Is there some possibility to 'exchange' data between two drives with less spare space than the whole data on the drive?

TIA!

[Walter Tuppa]

with a data drive larger as parity drive, you will get only into problem, if the data drive is filled with more data than the parity drive can handle. If it is less, everything will be fine

You may copy two 3 TB data disks to the new 6TB disk and then use splitted parity by two 3TB discs for single parity (the old parity disc and the copied away data disc).

[Leifi Plomeros]

1. Copy the parity file to the new 6 TB disk.
2. Format Old parity disk.
3. Update config so that Parity points to 6 TB disk and Data2 points to Old parity disk.
4. Run snapraid fix -d Data2 to put back the missing data on the old parity disk.

[Helge Philipp]

Thanks Walter, thanks Leifi, it worked perfectly. I refrained from using split parity (fear of creating an additional layer of complexity) but recovering from the parity (now residing on the bigger disk) went flawlessly.

btw, the disk failure was not a real disk failure but a failing SATA connector as I found out only after buying the new disk and recovering with SnapRaid... ^_^