Possible to re-partition Raid 5 smaller without data loss?

[Wiznaz]

I have been fighting with my Sans Digital 5-bay TowerRAID (Rocket Raid RR642L HighPoint) trying to replace a failed HDD but it rejects my new disk.

As of last week, I got the error beep and the problem was one of the original disks failed (Seagate). Before I bought a new drive, I tested the connectors & power, then pulled the drive, tested it solo and verified it was faulty. I have been running 4x4TB for the past 2-3 years until this failure. I went ahead and replaced the bad drive with a new 4TB drive. I originally had Auto-Rebuild enabled so I gave it 6 days to see if it would rebuild on it's own but it hasn't. I followed the High Point "How to Resolve a Critical RAID Status" PDF but I keep getting an error when I attempt to add the spare drive. The event log is very vague and gives no detail as to why it won't work other than:

"Failed to add Disk 'Device_1_E1_4'(Location: 1/E1/4) to array 'RAID_5_0'."

Within their DOS interface, I notice my replacement new 4TB drive is 30MB smaller than the 3 others I'm using. I never realized 'same size' drives varied in size unless it's a default partitioning issue.

Assuming the issue is the new WD drive being 30MB smaller, is it possible to remove 30MB from each existing drive to allow the Raid to add the new drive? Is this the easiest way without losing any data? Would using a software like EaseUS Partition Master fix this problem? Thanks!

 

[Elixer]

I thought they allowed that, as long as you aren't using up all the space?

 

[Wiznaz]

I thought they allowed that, as long as you aren't using up all the space?

I haven't found any specific info about it directed towards Raid downsizing. I have 2 TB free. I will read the Partition Master user manual to see.

 

[Wiznaz]

I attempted to shrink the raid partition 3 times now. It takes 8+ hours to perform and every time I check, the partition size stayed exactly the same. Is it common that drives are different sizes even though they are advertised as 1TB, 2TB, 4TB etc?

 

[Elixer]

I haven't seen drives from the same company, with the same line have different sizes, but, on platter density changes, or number of platters, yes, I have seen that.
I don't suppose you have a backup of the NAS? That might be easier than waiting that many hours to see if the resize worked or not. (Though, again, it should work, dunno why it is not for you.)

 

[Wiznaz]

I ended up using spare external drives to back up the data and deleting & forming a new array with the smaller drive in place.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Didn't see this until now. That's a very unusual problem you have. Is this the first drive failure you've dealt with on that controller?

When you recreated the array, do the other drives read the same size as the smaller drive now?

 

[Wiznaz]

Didn't see this until now. That's a very unusual problem you have. Is this the first drive failure you've dealt with on that controller?

When you recreated the array, do the other drives read the same size as the smaller drive now?

The new Raid 5 was able to use the smaller drive now in the array, and it shows .06 GB free left on the 3 larger drives.