Replacing disks on system with no hotswap drive bays.

[Kasazn]

Have a TrueNAS SCALE installed on a personal computer at home so they don't have hot swap drive bays.

All are connected using SATA3 data and power cables like usual.

How to replace the drives if there is ever a need to?

Can I set my drive to offline, turn off my PC, replace the drive and then turn the system back on?

 

[Constantin]

That's likely the preferred way. Take the drive offline, shut down the NAS, turn off power, open PC, replace the drive, close PC, reboot, resilver.

You might be able to get away with "hot swapping" drives even in a computer without backplanes, but said backplanes usually contain capacitors and such to help enable hot swapping without issues. Anytime you plug a inductive load like a drive motor into a powered system, there is an opportunity for unhappiness. So, powering down is the right thing to do, unless your OEM specifies otherwise.

 

[Kasazn]

Thank you for the advice. I was thinking of hot swapping by removing the SATA3 power and data cable manually and just replug them to a new drive.

 

[ChrisRJ]

Think about what would happen if

• while doing this you would accidentally hit the case hard and by that vibration damage one of the running disks
• you did not insert the cables perfectly straight and shorted two lines

What advantage do you see when doing this?

 

[Constantin]

Despite my system having nothing but a rudimentary backplane from Lian Li, I feel OK swapping drives in and out. I would not call this a hot-swap rig (no external access) but it's simple enough - remove the side panel, identify the bad disk, and pull. But - these drives are on rail sets, their connectors are hence aligned, and it's more difficult to hit another drive / component in the process.

Plus, and this is important, I paid a lot of attention to the electrical buses being as stress-free as possible by limiting the # of drives per SATA power connectors. I'd have to take a look to be sure, but I believe the 8 HDD and 3 SSDs are being serviced by 3 or 4 SATA power buses. Fewer drives on each bus reduces current draw per power port on the PSU and allows the PSU more easily to regulate the 5 and 12VDC bus power. Minimizing wiring length is another plus with low-voltage systems thanks to voltage drop.

If hot-swapping is a desired feature, you can go at it several different ways - buy a server case with lots of pre-designated storage locations like mine (Lian Li) and add backplanes or buy a case that has lots of flexible 5.25" bays up front and retrofit a 3x5 or 3x4 bay hot-swap insert that converts three 5.25" bays into four or five 3.5" hot swap bays. Quality hot swap bay inserts from SM or IcyDock are not cheap but worth the $$$ to ensure your 3.5" drives get adequate cooling.

Curiously, the Lian Li backplanes come with designated, but unpopulated, capacitor spots - both electrolytic through-hole as well as SMD ceramic. I filled both with a collection of stuff I ordered to deal with high-frequency noise as well as "bulk" local storage. Getting the solder out of the through-holes is not as much fun as I would have liked thanks to RoHS. Called for chipquick/bismuth to unclog those pores and clean the pads.

 

[uberwebguru]

That's likely the preferred way. Take the drive offline, shut down the NAS, turn off power, open PC, replace the drive, close PC, reboot, resilver.

You might be able to get away with "hot swapping" drives even in a computer without backplanes, but said backplanes usually contain capacitors and such to help enable hot swapping without issues. Anytime you plug a inductive load like a drive motor into a powered system, there is an opportunity for unhappiness. So, powering down is the right thing to do, unless your OEM specifies otherwise.

You mean take the failed drive offline?