RAID member number / NAS slot mismatch

English Storage
1

I’m almost done with upgrading my storage pool, and I noticed when looking at the output from md_checker that the drive numbers aren’t in order. Yes, slot 1 is device 0, and slot 2 is device 1. But after that, the device numbers are jumbled. Slot 3 is device 3 and slot 4 is device 2: 1,2,4,3,5,8,7,6.

Is there any reason, once the grow operation is complete, not to shut down the NAS and reorder the drives? I know that if there’s a serious problem and you need to manually assemble the array, you need to get the device order correct…but is there any reason beyond that and my own OCD to do this?

2

If you have solid backups, go ahead..if not why risk it ?

3

I just print off the list and mark the serial numbers of the drive as appropriate. Ready if it is ever required.

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4

OR, I can grab the label maker and stick the RAID member number on the drive caddies. :slight_smile:

When I was running RAID5 on top of USB 3.0 drives (which is a terrible idea I know), I stuck the last 4 of the device UUID on the drive. On boot, I extracted the UUID from each device, so if a device dropped from the array, I could find the physical disk and unplug/replug it.