Upgrading parity and drives and changing filesystem

[Talos]

Hi guys,

 

Ive been running unraid for a long time now (~15 years) and have reached the capacity of my current server. I currently have 9x3tb drives in there and have just bought 4x6tb drives to start upgrading the capacity - the are currently undergoing preclear to ensure there are no issues with them. My existing array is using the reiserFS file system and ive noticed some posts indicating that XFS or BTRFS are the preferred options nowadays. I dont have slots in my server to include more drives so will be replacing 4 of the existing 9 drives (including the parity).

 

Ive been trying to find a definitive guide on how to upgrade my server capacity and also change the filesystem but im still confused.

 

I obviously have to replace my parity drive first with a 6tb drive to make sure that it is the largest drive in the system but when i go to replace the other drives one by one and do the rebuild of my data on to them will it rebuild back to reiserFS or can i tell it to change to XFS/BTRFS and if so which is the best option to choose?

 

cheers!

Talos

[itimpi]

You cannot change the file system type as part of doing a rebuild.   You will therefore have to start by getting your system running with the new drives and the existing file systems.

 

There is a sticky forum post covering how to go about converting to XFS/BTRFS.  If you have a way to plug in the old drives via USB that might allow you to format new ones to XFS from the outset.  This would be a faster conversion at the risk of the data on the old drives not being protected until copied onto the new drives.

[Talos]

OK cool thanks mate...

 

So maybe my best approach might be to build a new array with the new drives and copy the content over to those and then add in the other drives one by one copying over the data to each after i make those into the new filesystem.

 

So now which file system do i go with? is BTRFS better with its bitrot detection or does the stability of XFS make it the preferred filesystem?

[itimpi]

19 minutes ago, Talos said:

So now which file system do i go with? is BTRFS better with its bitrot detection or does the stability of XFS make it the preferred filesystem?

I am not sure you will get consensus on this   I personally prefer XFS because it seems to be more resilient to unexpected server crashes/power downs while others care more about the BTRFS ability to automatically detect bitrot.

[Talos]

For my personal situation I run my server off a UPS so I havent had an ungraceful powerdown for many years now. I also only use it as a media/file server. I don't run any complex dockers or VM's or anything that risk crashing the server. This is mainly because i only run this off a Celeron 550 with 8gb ram so it doesnt have heaps of excess grunt for those so perhaps the negatives of BTRFS wouldn't be a big obstacle for me compared to the positive of bitrot detection. Might do a bit more reading while i wait for the pre-clears to finish on those drives to see which path i decide to take

 

Edit:OK ive done a bit more reading and i think i will just stick with XFS and run the risk with diskrot

 

Edited February 5, 2021 by Talos