CarloC

Hello Harro, I, too, thank everyone who took the time to read and respond to my questions and requests for help because, it turns out that, no more than a few hours after you asked a question about doing a disk conversion from RFS to XFS, I asked a very similar one. I also used Unbalance to empty a disk and then re-Format the empty disk. I then used Unbalance to move the next set of files and so on. I am doing my third disk now. For me, it also appears to have worked seamlessly and with my array serving files the whole time except for just a few minutes. I am using Unraid 6.3.2 But this was after I did follow the file conversion wiki to do my first conversion. To those who will know, I would ask why the wiki outlines, what seems to be, such a convoluted system of swapping drive assignments and new configurations while over-riding un-needed parity re-builds. At the same time, still very strongly cautioning about background processes that might be changing the files. It's fairly nerve-wracking for a newbie. 19 Steps is a daunting total. Can I assume it is because my array is very simple? It is just a home media file server. One user share and no disk shares. No dockers or any other programs running. No cache drives and just one parity disk. In essence, I don't care where the actual files are located, I just need Unraid to keep track of the 1 user share. If I had a more complex system, could I have brought the whole thing down by doing what I've done? Is that why keeping the files in the same disk location so important? Not wishing to be a bother but just interested to learn.

Hello, I'm using a KVM switch to share my peripherals with my PC. I can't copy and paste through that. I was used to doing it that way for a long time in the past with other PC's long before the remote desktop connection became a part of windows. I have only just started reading up about Putty and should probably retire the KVM and move ahead a couple of years in technology but the old man in me is a bit hesitant. A question, please. If I open a putty session and start something in that console, will it keep running if I log out or close the window? Do I need to keep a putty window open until the task is complete? I kind of like the KVM because it is 2 button presses and I'm straight in and watching whatever is happening and it just keeps happening when I button out.

With the help of some community members here, and the instructions in the wiki that are based on this thread, I have completed the addition of a new drive, and replaced a RFS drive with an XFS drive. I now have a drive excluded from the global shares as per the instructions. At this point I could repeat this process as per the wiki for the remaining disks using the rsync command and the disk swaping of assignments etc. However, is it possible for me to complete the transfer of the rest of the drives in this fashion: 1) Stop the array and put the excluded drive back into the global shares 2) Start the array - Will a parity check occur at this point? the drive was already included in the parity calculations even if it wasn't part of the user share, correct? 3) Use the Unbalance plugin to shift all the files from one of the RFS disks to the newly included and empty XFS disk. 4) Stop the array and change the file system on the newly emptied disk from RFS to XFS 5) Start the array and then format the drive. Will parity be maintained by the copying method used by Unbalance? I'm hoping that this will then present me with another XFS formatted drive which is included in the array and I just proceed until all drives are done. Any help with this is again appreciated.

Thanks for your help and input. Yes, it was the rsync commands that I found difficult to interpret. I find it hard to determine if the / has a space before or after it or if there is no spaces at all. I was already a little sensitized to this issue because of an issue I am/was having with preclearing some drives. In this post https://forums.lime-technology.com/topic/12391-re-preclear_disksh-a-new-utility-to-burn-in-and-pre-clear-disks-for-quick-add/?do=findComment&comment=506407 some corrections to the preclear_disk.sh file are presented. I really struggled with getting the second more complex correction done and had to give up. I will write a post to this topic talking about all the issues I have recently had with a preclear that would not go correctly. The other information you shared has made me think of something. I'm not sure if this is the right place to bring this up. It would seem to me that it is possible to have a second set of drives which are not a part of the user shares and could then act as backups to the drives in the array. The drives in the array could be public for use by anyone on the network, and the others could be secure and controlled by an administrator. Although not a true, offsite independent backup, they would be a set of redundantly protected backup disks holding copies of files. Is this actually acheivable? Does anyone do this?

Thanks for your help. I have just finished the first drive re-assignment and it all went well. I will now finish the rest but it will take quite a while. It seems to me that the good part about this process is that the array is protected for most of the time, and I will only need to do a rebuild parity at the end of all the re-formats if I choose to shrink the array again. I might do this because there was one drive that was starting to play up and occasionally produced a few read errors.

Hello all, Apologies if this has already been covered in this thread but I haven't been able to find the answer to my circumstances in my reading here. I am running Unraid plus 6.3.2. and wanting to do this conversion as part of a major array overhaul. I have followed the instructions to do the file system changeover from the wiki page, which links back to this thread. As a part of the instructions, it says to exclude the new swap drive in the global share settings before starting the array. I did this and then started the rsync command in the console. I saw all the files begin to get copied and the varying rates at which the copies occi\urred. So far, so good, and no problems. However, when I went back to the Unraid GUI in Windows, I noticed some things that concerned me. These are: 1) The swap disk seems to be included in the array. Its capacity was added to the capacity of the array after it was assigned and formatted. 2) The Shares tab now has a Disk Share for the swap disk that I didn't specifically create. 3) The Users Share (i only have one share) still shows included disks as 'all' and no disks as excluded 4) Both the new swap disk and the parity disk are doing writes as the copying is progressing. I assume this is slowing down the copy process. 4) The total capacity of the drives is being reduced by the size of the files as they are being copied. Is this normal behaviour? When it says to exclude the drive, I assumed that it would be reflected in these array markers. My main question is, is it safe to continue the process as documented? As just a minor issue/suggestion, some of the written command lines (where the criticality of not making and error are highlighted) can be difficult to read when it comes to the spacing. Sometimes it loks like the command is just one long string but spaces in the string exist, and at other times there appear to be spaces but in fact it is a continuous string. As a very much newcomer to this command line writing, so way to indicate spaces would be helpful and appreciated.