Howdy.

 

I'm going to be replacing a 4-port el-cheapo Masscool card w/ the Promise TX4 card; when I do this, will I be able to keep the files on the drives I'll be moving? There are currently 3 drives plugged into the Masscool card, and I'll want to just move them straight over to the new Promise card.

 

What will I need to do from within unRAID? Will it just consist of me getting them in the right order, and bring it back online? Will it need to parity check, etc?

 

Thanks!

Howdy.

 

I'm going to be replacing a 4-port el-cheapo Masscool card w/ the Promise TX4 card; when I do this, will I be able to keep the files on the drives I'll be moving? There are currently 3 drives plugged into the Masscool card, and I'll want to just move them straight over to the new Promise card.

 

What will I need to do from within unRAID? Will it just consist of me getting them in the right order, and bring it back online? Will it need to parity check, etc?

 

Thanks!

About the only critical drive to get re-assigned to its same slot is the parity drive.  As long as you go the drive assignment page and re-assign the same drive as parity as before, all will be fine. (if it is not on the card you are replacing, it will not need to be re-assigned)

 

If you want all the drives to have their original files you must assign them back to their logical slots in the array, if you don't care that the files on /mnt/disk1 are now on /mnt/some-other-disk, you can assign them to any slot.

 

As far as I know, if all the "data" drives are accounted for, even if assigned different slots in the array as before, parity will not need to be re-calculated.

 

Joe L.

Alrighty, fair enough. I have it setup so the parity drive is on one of the "better" ports: On the mobo itself, so it keeps em separate (only 7 drives atm, so I'm not using any of the 6 on the mobo except for the parity).

 

If I mess up and reassign one of the drives to a logical slot in the array, the data will still be there, it might just get shuffled around to a different physical drive if parity check is performed?

 

Thanks!

What I've done anytime I've moved drives around (such as changing to a new drive bay, etc), Prior to doing anything, I print my devices screen from the web interface (set it to LANDSCAPE for best results). Then, when I reboot, prior, I go by serial numbers and reassign them to the same slots, that way no problems. Also, you'll want to keep them the same if you have user shares restricted to specific drives (such as movies, include disk1, disk4, disk5) etc.

Yup, hehe, I had already planned to print it out before I do anything. Still in the learning phase: Want to know the worst case scenario of putting a drive in the wrong slot, before I have any actual date to lose

Getting the drives reassigned to the same disk number seems to be critical if you want to keep your data.  As sugested you should always keep close track of which serial number is assigned to which disk #.  I made a spreadsheet and keep it on google documents just in case.

Getting the drives reassigned to the same disk number seems to be critical if you want to keep your data.  As suggested you should always keep close track of which serial number is assigned to which disk #.  I made a spreadsheet and keep it on google documents just in case.

As long as you keep the parity drive the same, the other drives DO NOT have to be in the same positions to keep your data.

You might have to re-do your security if whatever was disk1 is now on a different logical slot, since samba security is by "disk1", "disk2", etc.  If you move the disks logically on the assignment page your data is not lost.    If you accidentally attempted to assign your old parity drive as a data drive the array will not start. (and it will probably show up as unformatted)

 

To make it easier on yourself, take note of the drive serial numbers and re-assign them to their original logical slots in the array.  If you don't, you won't lose your data, it will just be on a different logical disk than where you originally wrote it. (unless you reformat a drive... and if just moving things around to different controllers, or swapping controller cards, you should not need to reformat any drive.)

 

Joe L.

Getting the drives reassigned to the same disk number seems to be critical if you want to keep your data. As suggested you should always keep close track of which serial number is assigned to which disk #. I made a spreadsheet and keep it on google documents just in case.

As long as you keep the parity drive the same, the other drives DO NOT have to be in the same positions to keep your data.

You might have to re-do your security if whatever was disk1 is now on a different logical slot, since samba security is by "disk1", "disk2", etc. If you move the disks logically on the assignment page your data is not lost. If you accidentally attempted to assign your old parity drive as a data drive the array will not start. (and it will probably show up as unformatted)

 

To make it easier on yourself, take note of the drive serial numbers and re-assign them to their original logical slots in the array. If you don't, you won't lose your data, it will just be on a different logical disk than where you originally wrote it. (unless you reformat a drive... and if just moving things around to different controllers, or swapping controller cards, you should not need to reformat any drive.)

 

Joe L.

 

Hm.  So If i have a drive installed as say Disk 11 and i want to make it Disk 9 i can just go into the mgmt utility, shutdown unRAID and move the the drive to Disk 9?  I could have sworn that i tried that when i was testing and i thought that i ended up having to reformat it.  Maybe i just did something else wrong. I was even greener then than i am now.

I know it will let you swap data drives in their logical assignments, I do not know if you can move a drive from one slot to a different, currently empty "logical slot"  (I never tried that)

I know it will let you two swap data drives in their logical assignments, I do not know if you can move a drive from one slot to a different, currently empty "logical slot"  (I never tried that... but I will try it right now  )

 

I just tried an experiment, it would allow me to move a drive to a different (currently empty) logical slot but it wanted me to rebuild parity or reset the drive configuration (which would also re-calc parity)  The original slot came up as "missing" (indicator was "red") and the new slot as "new" but formatted. (indicator was "blue")

 

Tom, here is a spot to improve your logic.  If I move a drive from slot7 to slot9, and 9 was originally empty, and 7 will be empty as a result of the move, no need to recalc parity.

 

Joe L.

You know what. I probably saw this when i was testing and was confused.  I had almost no data on the system so i didnt much care but i must have clicked the rebuild option which caused my moved disk to be blank instead of starting it and forcing it to do a parity calc.  Either way, it'd be nice if it were less confusing and didnt require a parity rebuild at all.