I am making a unraid server for my sister, I would like to copy all of my files on my server about 3 TB (on 2 2TB drive) onto her newly created server. What is the best way to do this? Now I know this would not be recommended, but would it be possible to, remove one of my data drives, replace it with a blank drive, rebuild parity, remove the other drive, and replace it then rebuild parity, then just pop the two drives into my sisters server and create parity? Now would I be unprotected while doing this? Because if I were to loose another hard drive while rebuilding, could I just pop the old data drive in and rebuild parity on the broken disk? Am I making this too complicated, I bet there is an easy way of doing this.

If you haven't completely setup her array yet and built parity, or if you don't mind having an invalidated parity drive in her system and having to recalculate parity on her system then you could try the following:

 

1) Stop her array, power down, remove the drives to contain your data copy

2) Stop your array, power down, add the drives to contain your data copy

3) Power up your server

4) Start your array

5) Use unMenu with SNAP addon to mount your sister's drives outside of your array

6) Telnet/SSH into your console and use MC (midnight commander) to copy your data

   [Alternative is to use rsync or cp to copy the data across]

7) once the copy is done unmount your sister's drives via SNAP

stop your array, power down, remove the drives now containing your data copy

9) add the drives back to your sister's server

10) power up your sister's server

11) start your sister's array

12) invoke build parity on sister's server

13) start your system and array

 

This is the fastest way to copy your data while having it always available under parity protection and with the minimum amount of parity rebuilds -- only 1 parity rebuild and it's on her system.

Another way (maybe slower) is to connect both servers to a windows/mac machine and do the copying via that machine - from one unraid server disk share to the other unraid server disk share.

 

for faster speeds set your sister's server without parity first and only after copy is done turn on parity.

 

Doing the copy by using a windows/mac machine will be slower since you're copying the data from Server 1 to Client PC to Server 2, so it's two copies for each file.

 

Another way, but one that requires a bit more setup is to use RSYNC to copy between Server 1 and Server 2. Maybe one of the other users like Joe L / BubbaQ / WeeboTech can provide the proper instructions for that if you haven't found it by searching for it.

As I said it may be slower.

 

Are you sure that it will be copied twice? won't windows read once from server 1 and write straight to server 2?

 

Because it is a 1 time process I think he may opt for longer transfer speeds instead of moving around drives or setting up RSYNC.

 

Just leave it overnight more accurately 29 hours (at 30MB/s).

 

 

 

By far easiest (as long as you give the new server a DIFFERENT name other than "tower" )

 

Do not assign a parity drive in the new server.

Access both servers from any other PC on your LAN, use Teracopy with the CRC checking option to copy to the new PC and verify the copy.

 

When the copies are complete, assign the parity  drive on the new server, let it initially calculate parity, then press "Check" to verify the initial parity calc can be read from the parity disk.

 

Slightly harder, much faster, but still not difficult is to download and unzip the attached rsyncd.conf file to your flash drive on the new server.

Then, on the new server, log in and start the rsync daemon process by typing

rsync --daemon --config=/boot/rsyncd.conf

 

then on the old server with the files, you can invoke the rsync process to copy each user-share in turn as follows (my second server is named "tower2", you'll need to use the name of your second server in the following commands):

cd /mnt

rsync -rlpgoDvrH "user/Pictures" tower2::mnt/user/

rsync -rlpgoDvrH "user/Movies" tower2::mnt/user/

etc...

 

You'll need to leave the telnet session open while the copies are made, so disable any screen-shaver or sleep function on the PC with the telnet session, or, use the system console.

 

The rsync method is great in that it can be re-started if it is interrupted for any reason and checksums are automatically used.

 

This method/commands shown above assumes you have user-shares enabled on both servers.  If you do not, you'll need to modify the above commands to be disk specific

cd /mnt

rsync -rlpgoDvrH "disk1/Pictures" tower2::mnt/disk1/

rsync -rlpgoDvrH "disk1/Movies" tower2::mnt/disk1/

rsync -rlpgoDvrH "disk2/Pictures" tower2::mnt/disk2/

rsync -rlpgoDvrH "disk2/Movies" tower2::mnt/disk2/

 

 

Joe L.

rsyncd.zip