glave

Aahhh, good call, I could see that easily happening. Ok, to be clear then, I have removed 3 drives, which now show a status of missing. Next I should telnet in and run 'initconfig' and then start the array. Can I add my new blank drive before I do this and add it to the array, or should I wait until I've shrank the array, rebuilt, and then add the new drive?

I'm removing 3 drives from my array and adding 1 large one. I followed instructions from the post linked from the wiki (http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2088.0) however, when I go back to the main page, I do not have the restore button at all, and the start button is greyed out with a message: Too many wrong and/or missing disks! Has this process changed?

I checked my logs after the monthly parity check today and noticed one drive is screaming like a banshee on errors, thus I will be replacing it tomorrow. This made me kick into a 'maintenance' time on the server and this question is plaguing me. I'm currently on 4.7, but unsure if I should wait out for 4.71, or check out the 5.0 beta. Any benefit or just play it safe for now?

Excellent. I thought as much but wanted to be 100%. Moving files around takes forever and is so exhausting...

In my previous media server, I had a share called temp that I would dump things over into to cleanup, and then move then from an ssh session to their final home. If I do this on unraid, will it distribute the files correctly across the split of the user shares, or do I need to move it into place over the samba user share? I'm guessing that to accomplish what I'm after I would simply do something like 'mv directoryname /mnt/user/sharename'

Well, I managed to get all of my existing data moved over to two large drives I borrowed from work. Currently my array is cleaning off my old drives. I have the two temp drives in the server (ext3 partitions) and obviously not assigned in any way. Once my array is 100% done, will I be able to log into the console and temp mount the ext3 drives and manually rsync my data over to the array? I'm hoping to do that, then just power down and remove the transition drives and be finally done.

I'm wondering if anything else could be at work. I've tried all suggestions so far, and still no luck. I just created 2 bootable cds, one using plop, and the other using the panasonic boot disc mentioned in the old hardware thread. Both cds boot fine, they see the flash drive, but when they tell it to boot, I get 'Remove discs or other media. Press any key to restart'. I get this message quiet often when trying to boot directly from the usb drive also. I've tried different usb ports, 3 5 different usb drives, created the drives from an absolute clean install of windows, but I'm still getting random ability to boot. There is no one perfect way I can get a reliable boot (from cold boot or not).

It's keeping the settings between boots. I can actually see the usb device listed during post as it lists the hard drives as well. Its as if the usb key is suddenly no longer bootable, but I can still get it to boot on occasion after random cold boots.

Is there anyone else that may be using this motherboard? I seem to get random results on my ability to boot from usb on it. The first time, it worked great, then following, I get a message to select proper boot media or restart. I've tried 3 different usb keys, sony, sandisk cruzer, and a pny. Same random results. It seems that each key worked great the first boot only, and after that, they usually did not.

Ok, would it be possible to do this: Stick a new blank drive in my machine Boot the machine up using unraid Make a new device using said new disk Restart back into old server Mount the device that unraid made and copy over data to it Essentially, can I mount an unraid created device consisting of 1 disk, no parity, in a normal ubuntu environment?

Currently I've got 2 raid5 arrays with 4 drives in each, and using lvm to make them 1 big volume. I'm looking to add a couple of empty drives, and start moving data over so I can convert this rig to unraid. Is there a simple way to accomplish this without having to move all my data to a non-raid disk and then move it back over to unraid?

Ugh, that clouds things then. My setup currently has 4- 500gb drives and 4- 300gb drives in 2 raid5 arrays with 1.5gb data consumed. I was hoping to get 3 of the 500gb drives set up on unraid and then begin adding over the next few weeks as money allows (upgrade license, add parity, etc).

Excellent. Thanks for the quick response!

I'm getting ready to convert my file server over to unraid, and I've got to do this in stages. Free version first, then plus, then pro (I'm poor!). Does the 3 drive limit in the unregistered version include the parity drive (2 drives + parity) or is it 3 drives plus the parity?