marlin

Questions about "reformatting a cache drive". Sorry, I'm sure this has been covered before but search is not very helpful. I read the Wiki under 'storage management'. I have 1 cache formatted btrfs would like to change to xfs, 6.9.2. No VM's and 2 dockers I had (putty and kursader) have been uninstalled. The cache show appdata, domain, system and ZERO files. 1) If I just format the drive, instead of going through the move steps, will the 3 cache files be automatically rebuilt? 2) Can I use Network/Windows to move the files to my desktop computer, format cache, then return the files to cache? Thanks for any help.

Happy to report conversion of data drives complete. Couple of notes for future converters, it takes forever so do it sooner than later. Step 11/swap; I went through and manually set each disk file type from auto just to make sure everything ran correctly. Step 15; if you set format type of both drives to XPS here you don't have to stop/start array again. Of course you need to be confident everything went correctly. I still want to convert single cache drive from btrfs to xfs. Set up notifications. Check function of UPS. Thanks all for the help with the conversion. tower-diagnostics-20220928-1150.zip

A quick check; 'mirroring process' calls for rsync -rcvPX /mnt/disk10/ /mnt/disk11/ as a checksum command, but you are suggesting -narcv what is the difference? Since I don't know rsync from a hole in the ground. May skip it in any event due to it probably taking a long time to run, no possibility of background writing since I'm converting in SAFE mode, and would like to get to the last disk for conversion. Thank You.

Ah, live and learn as usual. Thanks for the help. Will gladly follow your suggestions. Will return with results. Thanks again!

Thanks for the reply. Using: rsync -avPX /mnt/disk'#'/ /mnt/disk'swap' from the "mirror procedure" in the sticky. It is 1 run through so I think it is different than your process. Do you think my idea for reformatting the swap disk will work?

Update. During 4th drive of 5 conversions the inevitable happened and the power went out in the middle of the night. Perfect weather but a branch someplace supposedly fell on wires, 890 households out. Once I heard alarm the Unraid had already shut down the UPS (as it is suppose to) but apparently there was still a 'unclean shutdown'. Can the server NOT do a clean shutdown during rsync read/write? Not sure what caused the unclean shutdown. Anyway ran a Parity check (with correction) and finished with Zero sync errors. Thought at this point is to reformat my 'swap' disk and restart the conversion of disk 4 from the beginning since it was someplace around 414GB into the 1.8TB conversion. To do this can I just change the format on swap disk to RFS then back to XFS, 2 format steps, and then restart the conversion? Don't want to have to rerun the 11.5 hour parity again if possible. Any suggestions welcome. Thanks. tower-diagnostics-20220925-2238.zip

Just some notes for anyone traveling down this path. The first 2 of 5 disk conversions are complete. Recommended to take a screen shot/print out of MAIN page to have a record of disk serial numbers and position in the array for reference. The transfers take almost forever. The write speed runs between ~10-23MB/s. This is probably a function of keeping parity updated, disk speed of 5400 rpm (old WD green), and location of head on disk. This worked out to be about 24 hrs/TB, which is painfully stressful for the first disk. And about 30 hours for the second disk of 1.8TB on a 2TB drive. But looking on the forum not unusual speed for having parity disk still engaged. Rebooting before copying into SAFE MODE eliminates the worry and warnings about disks missing data due to data being placed on disks after the copy function, “background writing”. Highly recommended. The ‘NOTE’ in the procedure under “system assumptions” page 5/7, referencing not starting with a disk already with XFS file system seems to be irrelevant since the first disk I copied to (swap disk) was previously formatted to XFS. Not sure what’s up with this? STEP 4; Stopping the array and going to Settings/Global Shares Setting/ADD/Excluded Disk # ‘swap disk’ (whatever that is for you) seems to work fine even if the disk had already been assigned to ARRAY previously. The newer XFS file system looks to take up more space on the disk than the REISERFS did. My reserve space dropped from 204GB 10% (of 2TB) to 191GB. Really glad I didn’t fill the disk up during the original loading of media. My generator is on standby since a storm is due in a month earlier than most years, UPS at 100%. Weather is obviously broken. Will update with further information as it arises. Hope this is helpful for anyone else slow to keep up with all the latest changes.

Thanks Frank confidence level improved. Thanks also for the editor information, helpful news for me. Going to wait for the present west coast heatwave to pass since grid power is questionable apparently. Power problems in both summer and winter, good grief. Will report back when complete or if gremlins show up. Thanks again

@JonathanM I don't really care which drive slot has which share on it. As I understand that is the whole strength of shares. What media is on which drive is more of a concern but that can be sorted out. Your suggestion of process is understandable, thanks. @Frank1940 Your point of the 'global shares setting' was actually part of my original post. So to re ask the question, can I set the target drive which is already formatted and assigned to 'excluded disk' and then proceed? I assume this is done with array not started? And this would avoid the problem of the same file being in 2 places at the same time. The 'check for error' plug-in will show this duplicate of files I've found. Of course doing the 'global shares setting' will require me to go through the 'new configuration' steps which is a bit confusing also. I like the idea of being offline while doing the process, will pull the ethernet cable. Basically all drives will be 2TB size but appreciate the suggestion of largest to smallest progress. Per PS I always left 10% of the disk empty so this should not be an issue, but thanks for the thought and it may be important to someone else who stumbles across this thread in the future. I'm going to assume the NOTE question is something residual that nobody remembers why it is included in the process. Please let me know if this is incorrect. Thanks as always

I know about the battery drain and recharge time issue, thanks. UPS front panel has graph/readout of % charge. New battery set last year. My UPS is a APC Back-UPS RS 1500 which has line conditioning capability. During grid power outage I try to keep my computer use at a minimum but have used my desktop successfully. Do not recall running Unraid during grid down time but if I did it was the old x32 hardware which is gone now. I do have the server connected to the UPS for clean shutdown after 2-3 minutes or some % of battery left if needed. Also just upgrade my generator to a nice quiet Honda 7500 which has full sine wave output so the power in should be as good or better than the utilities provide. Any further input on the originally posted questions about the Reiserfs to XPS conversion process?

@trurl Thanks for reviewing my diagnostics. No SMART warnings on dashboard page, thankfully. I appreciate your standard warnings but I have never run UnRaid when I'm away from it and I have never had full time internet connection up until very recently when I finally got STARLINK. So in light of now having real internet and not barbwire telephone dial up I will implement your reminder and setup alerting. No such thing as too many lerts. 😁 Nothing irreplaceable. Just lots of media that would take a lot of time to reload. I've been on the forum a long time but still a newbie since I don't pull on all the wonderful bells and whistles available. the 3TB drives are powered up so I guess = hot. @Frank1940 Rural electric with very random outages thanks to PG&E hazard reduction outages, fires, idiots running into power poles, drought stress and beetle bored trees falling onto power lines as they feel required or winter storms blowing things down, etc. Country living is great. Nice to have my own 12TB of movies to watch by the hum of a generator. 🤣 UPS gives me about 20 minutes run time to get generator fired up if I'm in the middle of something important on the computer or server. The various UPS's I have start screaming as soon as they go on battery to let me know. Plan is to convert 2TB at a time while babysitting the process. So a few days of conversion and I should be catching up to the 2020's. Thanks both for putting some time into this to help me along.

Will run Parity check before proceeding with conversion. Unit is not left powered on for much time so I run Parity check somewhat infrequently. Date count somewhat deceiving. Electricity here comes and goes so even though I have a UPS no reason to tempt fate. 2 - 3TB drives are unassigned and are basically ready to be assigned as needed. Not sure on the definition of 'cold/hot spare' is but set up these 2 drives in case an assigned drive was to fail, so I'd have something ready to go. There are also 2 - 2TB drives assigned to unRaid which I know are empty since I fill 1 drive at a time to 90%. I like to know what media is on what drive. Yes 8 data drives in array. I think it will be simpler to convert --five-- reiserfs drives to XFS and leave them in the array. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Would still like to have at least 1 drive ready as replacement in case an assigned drive goes red ball at some point. PRO license, so disk count not an issue. I realize just getting 2 big drives (1 for parity) would be simpler but even though these drives are old not many hours on them. Ran diagnostics last time I had unit powered up, see attached. I seem to always be running to catch up and since newer O/S will stop supporting reiserfs trying to get ahead. Just updated to x64 system after years of box being dormant. Thank you for any assistance. tower-diagnostics-20220714-0834.zip

Thank you for looking into this. Look forward to hearing back. No loss of data more important than speed. Data is replaceable but who wants to go that route if avoidable. Thanks again.

Preparing to do Reiserfs to XFS conversion on some drives. Running 6.9.2 PRO version. 4TB parity, all assigned data drives 2TB – 5 reiserfs, 3 xfs (2 of these are empty), 2 – 3TB drives precleared/unassigned. Question using the 'Mirroring procedure' https://wiki.unraid.net/index.php/File_System_Conversion , If using an empty 2TB disk as the swap disc, which is already assigned and formatted xfs, can/should I still do step 4 settings/global shares settings/excluded disks" with the array stopped? An additional confusion point is the "NOTE" above the procedure which says "Note: the swap drive should not be formatted with XFS (the resultant file system); if it is, then you will need to clear it or format it to something else first" Any clarification will be appreciated.

Preparing to do Reiserfs to XFS conversion on some drives. Running 6.9.2 PRO version. 4TB parity, all assigned data drives 2TB – 5 reiserfs, 3 xfs (2 of these are empty), 2 – 3TB drives precleared/unassigned. Question using the 'Mirroring procedure' https://wiki.unraid.net/index.php/File_System_Conversion , If using an empty 2TB disk as the swap disc, which is already assigned and formatted xfs, can/should I still do step 4 settings/global shares settings/excluded disks" with the array stopped? An additional confusion point is the "NOTE" above the procedure which says "Note: the swap drive should not be formatted with XFS (the resultant file system); if it is, then you will need to clear it or format it to something else first" Any clarification will be appreciated.