r/unRAID•
West-Ticket5411

Correct order of operations for dead drive + parity upgrade

Looking for advice/help on current Unraid situation.

Lately, I've been meaning to grab another drive as the array was getting more and more full. However, as I was going about finding a deal, I awoke to an old 4TB drive I added recently showing a bunch of errors and being emulated but disabled.

I was able to find a "deal" on a 16TB drive, and will likely pick it up tomorrow - so if I'm to get the 16TB drive, am I able to have it replace my 10TB parity drive, and then use the 10TB to replace the 4TB? Is the data emulation maintained despite upgrading the parity drive, or should I find another drive to replace the 4TB first and deal with that process before I attempt to upgrade the parity one?

In researching some of the steps with replacing a parity drive, or replacing a dying/dead drive, some of the information has been less than clear for this specific circumstance and don't really want to risk doing things in an less than optimal order.

There is nothing absolutely critical in the array, as most things are backed up other places, but I'd really like to avoid messing anything up and re-doing work.

Posted Jun 5, 2026, 4:55 AM UTC

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