When i built my Truenas scale server I used cheap SSD as was building it on a budget and these cheap SSD don’t perform well (they perform worse than my old NAS which as HDD in). I have since brought some better quality SSD and wondering how I go about swapping the old SSD out to the new ones?
Is it a case of clicking of going into the disk section selecting each disk and clicking the replace on each of the disks one by one?
I’ve tried searching through these forms and they are either about replacing failed disks or replacing disks with higher size than what is already installed or replacing a HDD with an SSD. Any help will be much appriciated
“In theory” [tm], the “one at a time” procedure should work. But every single swap is a potential point of failure. And there is no (easy) turning back to a healthy pool.
If I were you, I’d back up the config, replicate the pool to some extra storage (external drive etc) and just “start over” with a fresh pool with the new drives. That way, if anything goes wrong (and we know, anything that can … will …), you have a backup AND you can revert back to the old pool on the old drives.
If not, just import the config and redo the backup.
By replicating the pool do you just mean coppy the data eg files onto an external hard drive?
Also when you say start over with a new pool would that involve re-installing truenas scale as i dont think you can simply delete the pool within scale?
Also with the backup would that keep the applications or would i need to re install them with any configurations i had?
If you have the available SATA ports I’d connect the new drives (while keeping the old drives also connected) and do exactly as you’ve stated.
If you really want to be safe, it never hurts to save backup config periodically period. It never hurts to backup the data of your pool before you make major changes (like replacing all the drives).
Unless something goes crazy wrong I don’t think you’d need to re-install TrueNAS.
…personally I’d do it the way I mentioned above & just send it (double check the drive SN#s as after a reboot the sda/sdb/etc identifiers can randomly change from what you’re used to)
By swapping disks I mean only the drives that the pool / vdevs are built from. Not the system drive (SATA-DOM, some other SSD, whatever). There is no need to reinstall. But since the config for jobs, shares etc. resides within the “system dataset pool” and this, again, is stored on the data pool by default, you need to backup your config.
Steps involved:
backup config → general settings → manage config
replicate base dataset (and all datasets within) from current snapshots to some other ZFS storage via zfs send (could be some other ZFS server or external drive etc.). If you got a rather simple setup with basically some “monolithic” dataset that is shared across your home network without special users, permissions, ACLs etc., then simple data copy would possibly suffice
disconnect old pool (without the options of destroying data and configs!)
shutdown your machine, remove old pool drives, install new ones
What is your current pool setup and hardware. It helps in giving advice. If you have spare drive ports and a two drive mirror pool, you can add the new SSD(s) as a third and/or fourth mirror, allow data to resliver and then remove first two SSD. You can also do live replacement of a drive.
Make sure your new SSD have actual capacities larger than the current drives. 1TB isn’t allways the same exact size.
My current pool setup is 4 silicon power a55 2tb ssd in a raide z2 and looking at replacing them with samsung 2tb drives. So the drives should be the same size altough like you said they may be slightly bigger/smaller in size. I have enough sata ports free but not enough caddies for the new drives. Cpu is Intel Xeon CPU E5-2603 v3 @ 1.60GHz.
The reason I’m less cautious than the others on this is because it is SSDs. There is much less wear process involved for this process vs HDDs.
Once again, if you want to be very cautious backing up the data on another device in case of critical fault can be done first.
*listed steps in case you really want them: shut down, connect all replacement disks (leave originals in the case), replace one at a time until done using the GUI. Shut down, remove old disks, put new disks in your caddies for cleanliness.
While “mechanically” much more robust, SSD controllers are magic in their very special very own way. With the given drives (silicon power a55 → Phison S11) my trust is further decreased.
Just inserted a new drive with the view of clicking the replace drive option and selecting the new drive however I cannot do that due to the new 2tb drives being read as 1.82TB compared to the old drives showing as 1.86TB.
How would you recommend going forward if I cannot use the replace drive option?
Do you have a known, good backup of all the data in the pool or somewhere to store it temporarily? Also need to know if NAS is storing data only or if you have apps and VMs, etc
Destroy pool and recreate with new, smaller drives is option. Reload all your data.
If you can return new SSD and get larger models and replace one by one, is another.
Depending on where you are in the world, Best Buy in USA has a WD external on sale
i have another NAS (QNAP) which i can backup the truenas scale to.
At the moment I only have a few apps (nextcloud, immich and my network controller running on the truenas scale system) Looking at the drives I’ve only used about 200GB so far.
At this point in time the system is not backed up anywhere as all the files I have on it are also stored in the cloud, on another slower NAS (consisting of HDD) and on my main PC.
It’s up to you if you want to go with starting from scratch on this NAS. You could just document all your apps and settings and recreate it all new with the pool destruction or just wait a bit and see if any other users post ideas.
So to start from scratch i would need to use the export/disconnect option and that will get rid of the current pool. then power the server down, take out old drives and then put in new drives and re-create the pool?
You don’t need to export if you are starting fresh with the new SSD in place since we have no way to bring up the old SSD and pool together.
You are just powering off the server. Replacing the SSD drives and then doing a complete new install of TrueNAS. You would have to recreate your VDEV and pool again, install any apps you have and configure them.
I don’t know how you would securely wipe data from the old SSD, if necessary. A lot of manufactures have tools to wipe the SSD but each has their own tool. I mention that because I don’t know what you are doing with the old SSD drives.
There may be a way to back up the entire pool and all your settings. Do the new install and drive changes and restore that backup with everything but I am not familiar with it. Another user may come along with a solution, other than what I suggest.
