I'm looking to upgrade to 4.7 and want to completly reformat my Flash - reason: to have a fresh install without custom added routines.

I will be upgrading from 4.5.6 so I'm wondering if this is just a matter of:

 

1) power down server

2) reformat flash

3) install new software onto flash

4) insert flash and boot system

5) assign drives

6) calculate parity

 

So my question I guess.  Will this work or am I asking for more than I should attempt?

 

Thanks for the help

JDM

This is not windows, you don't need to reformat flash but only delete what you don't need.

This is part of my OCD.  Besides - i'm not exaclty sure of what to erase and if this is a proper procedure it will give me peace of mind.

i'm currently preclearing the last of my drives for my first unRAID build and was wondering the same thing. i was going to do exactly the steps you laid out (leaving out the formatting), but was wondering about the parity calc.

 

i have one disk precleared and filled, these other three disks should finish preclearing in a few hours and i was going to add them, transfer over what i needed, redo the flash drive, then assign the drives, assign and calculate parity... but in your case (since your parity drive is already operational), i was wondering if you'd need to recalculate the parity or just re-add the drive.

Not sure about the parity in my case - I was just under the impression that UnRaid would freak out because it wouldn't be sure of what I was doing.

 

Parity calc. in my case (4 Data drives @ 2TB ea. and using about 7TB of the 8TB available) takes about 10 to 12 hours - so I would do that over night if needed.

 

Just to clarify - I'm not adding a drive - I'm simply wanting to reformat my Flash (to clear all files) and upgrade to 4.7 from 4.5.6 at the same time.

 

I'm just not sure if this is proper procedure or if its recommended at all.

 

 

Just delete everything on the flash drive and then you should be able to just do steps 3 and 5. It won't hurt to do step 4 as well but it should not be necessary. If you just can't help yourself then do steps 1 and 2 as well.

 

To make a bootable USB Flash device using Windows (XP/Vista/Win7), follow these steps:

 

1. Plug your USB Flash device into your Windows PC.

 

2. Open 'My Computer' (XP) or 'Computer' (Vista/Win7) and right-click your Flash device. Click 'Format...', set the volume label to UNRAID and then click 'Start'. Important: the volume label must be set to UNRAID (all caps).

 

3. Click on your Flash device (to open it) and drag then entire contents of the unRAID Server zip file to the Flash.

 

4. For Windows XP, click on the file 'make_bootable'.  A DOS window will open and run the 'syslinux' utility on the Flash.  For Windows Vista or Windows 7, right-click on the file 'make_bootable' and select 'Run as administrator'.

 

5. Once again, right-click your Flash device in 'My Computer' or 'Computer' and then click 'Eject'.  Your Flash device is now ready to boot into unRAID Server OS.

 

Then yes, you assign the drives and press the Start button. DO NOT mix up a data drive and the parity drive. I would first assign the data drives and press Start just to make sure they all apear formatted with data. Then, the last drive out must be the parity so stop the array and assign it and then start the array again.

 

Peter