Moving drives from old version to new version unRAID.


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Sorry for the revisit to this topic. I know some of this has been answered in the past, but this is a twist on some of the other topics.

Had an old 4.3 version running on my server. Lost the MoBo or CPU, so I upgraded the machine to today's technology. Sadly, the USB would not boot the new machine. So I thought I would get the newest version of unRAID. The problem is, I was not able to properly back up the old version. I instead just copied the files to my desktop as a backup.

Now, here is my fear. If I move the old drives over to new version, I am afraid that the drives will get reconfigured and maybe overwritten or just lost in some way. I do have the correct sequence of the drives, the first being the parity drive, the others holding the data. Not sure that any of this matters though, if the new system will want to start with a blank canvas. 

Here are my questions:

 

1) Can I just move them over and the new version will recognize everything as it was with old version?

2) Is there a way to connect the drives to another windows machine, one by one and grab all the data onto a backup drive?

3) Is there a way to use my old configuration files with the new USB to see the old drives as they were built?

 

Any help on this will be greatly appreciated. 

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3 hours ago, ChipBuffalo said:

1) Can I just move them over and the new version will recognize everything as it was with old version?

You should probably first read through these instructions on upgrading to 6.x from 5.x and older versions.

 

With a single parity drive, the order of data drives does not really matter (slot 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.)  If it is the same disk configuration and you are not doing a new config, the drives will all just come up in the array as currently configured since unRAID tracks them by serial number.  Things like SATA or HBA port don't really matter.

 

The only concern would be if you were attaching the drives in the new system to a controller or backplane that somehow reports the serial number differently.

 

Your drives will not get overwritten or data destroyed unless you do something like formatting them.  Don't do that.

 

It looks like your prior unRAID version was before VMs were ever supported so VM passthrough hardware in the new system is not an issue.

 

If your prior version of unRAID was a 4.x version. the disks are formatted with ReiserFS.  This is still supported in unRAID 6.x but not recommended.  You will likely want to look into the procedure for reformatting the drives in XFS after you get a working v6 system.

 

3 hours ago, ChipBuffalo said:

2) Is there a way to connect the drives to another windows machine, one by one and grab all the data onto a backup drive?

 Reading ReiserFS drives under Windows would be very problematic even if there was a utility to do so.  I would not even attempt it.

 

A better solution would be to read the data in a Linux machine.  You probably will not even need to do this anyway so don't worry about it unless you run into problems.

 

An even better option would be to put new drives in a new unRAID config and mount the old data drives with the Unassigned Devices plugin and copy data directly from old drives to new.

 

Again, we are talking worst-case scenarios here if the old drives don't just mount properly in the new system.

 

3 hours ago, ChipBuffalo said:

3) Is there a way to use my old configuration files with the new USB to see the old drives as they were built?

Refer to the above mentioned upgrade instructions to see if anything has changed drastically that may require some manual changes.  Hopefully, much of your old config files are still usable.

 

In the worst cast scenario, you can do a new config with unRAID 6.9.x and assign the parity drive to the parity slot and the data drives to array slots and reconfigure the rest of the system.  Your data will remain intact unless you somehow mix up parity and a data drive.

 

None of this experimenting with what works and what does not will destroy your data unless you mix up parity and data drives or format drives.

 

If you are lucky, drives will just transfer over and the existing config files will bring the system up with a few tweaks.  If not, there is a minimally painful path to get there with a new config while preserving data.

Edited by Hoopster
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Thank you Hoopster. Very informative.  One question regarding this: 

 

14 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

The only concern would be if you were attaching the drives in the new system to a controller or backplane that somehow reports the serial number differently.

 

This is essentially a new machine. new MoBo/CPU. Is that what you are talking about with "controller" or "backplane"?

 

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One more precautionary note!!!!

 

If you are presented with a option to format asny drive from the old system.  STOP  and ask yourself if you really wanted to lose all the information that is currently on that drive!  If you do not want to lose that information, do not proceed any further.  Start asking questions on this forum. 

 

 

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One more thing.  When you upgrade from a version prior to version 5.0, you will have to run the   New Permissions   Tool that is in the new version.   The permissions/owners changed with the introduction of version 5.0 and this script was written to address that issue.  (I seem to recall that it had something to do with security...)

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30 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

If you are presented with a option to format asny drive from the old system.  STOP  and ask yourself if you really wanted to lose all the information that is currently on that drive!  If you do not want to lose that information, do not proceed any further.  Start asking questions on this forum. 

 

Thank you and understood. My fear was more about would the system do something to the drives, automatically, that would make them unusable. Just wanting to make 100% sure that I am not going to lose my stuff. 

Moving forward, I know how to better protect myself from accidental loss. 

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You are starting with such an old version (I started with the Beta 5.0 version back about 2011), that there are not may folks still around with any experience with ver4.3.  There is this wiki article but even it recommends updating to 4.7 before moving on to version 5.0.

 

     https://wiki.unraid.net/Legacy/Upgrade_Instructions

 

I am going to ping @JorgeB as I believe he has advised folks on how to use the New Config tool to do what you are trying to do.  As I recall, there are certain settings in the process which will not even cause a parity check to occur on the initial start of the array. 

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1 hour ago, ChipBuffalo said:

This is essentially a new machine. new MoBo/CPU. Is that what you are talking about with "controller" or "backplane"?

No, generally this applies to certain PCIe disk  controllers , or disk cages with backplanes that connect to PCIe controllers. 

 

If you are just connecting directly to motherboard SATA ports or to an HBA, you should not have problems with serial number changing on you.

 

Some of the warnings you received from @Frank1940 were why I advised you start by reading the upgrade procedure in the manual.  Even though it primarily deals with upgrading form early versions of v6, there was a link at the bottom that directs to a thread about upgrading from v5 and earlier.  However, now that I have looked at it, it appears to deal mostly with v5' although, I have not perused the entire thread.

 

As I said earlier, and perhaps this is the cleanest way to do it, you can always create a new config and add your disks back in to the array with the data intact.  You would have to reconfigure unRAID, but, your version is so old you don't have to worry about VMs, Docker, appdata permissions, most plugins, etc.

 

There are perhaps some permission issues to deal with, but, your version is so old that most of what unRAID does today, other than a pure NAS will be configured for the first time when you get to a workable v6 boot state.

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9 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

I am going to ping @JorgeB as I believe he has advised folks on how to use the New Config tool to do what you are trying to do.  As I recall, there are certain settings in the process which will not even cause a parity check to occur on the initial start of the array. 

Just need to check "parity is already valid" after the new config and before array start.

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Thank you so much for all the great feedback everyone. Really appreciate this community! 

7 hours ago, SimonF said:

SpaceInvader One has just put a video up on this subject.

 

Thank you SimonF, this is a great tutorial, but I did the "migrate out" step wrong, so the conditions are not there for me to "migrate in" this easily. 

 

Much appreciated though, I will be sure to follow Spaceinvader!

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16 hours ago, Hoopster said:

Some of the warnings you received from @Frank1940 were why I advised you start by reading the upgrade procedure in the manual.  Even though it primarily deals with upgrading form early versions of v6, there was a link at the bottom that directs to a thread about upgrading from v5 and earlier.  However, now that I have looked at it, it appears to deal mostly with v5' although, I have not perused the entire thread.

 

As I said earlier, and perhaps this is the cleanest way to do it, you can always create a new config and add your disks back in to the array with the data intact.  You would have to reconfigure unRAID, but, your version is so old you don't have to worry about VMs, Docker, appdata permissions, most plugins, etc.

 

There are perhaps some permission issues to deal with, but, your version is so old that most of what unRAID does today, other than a pure NAS will be configured for the first time when you get to a workable v6 boot state.

Thank you Hoopster. I will dig into the manual. I was going to upgrade the drives anyway, so a clean install is sounding like it's the best bet. Just to make sure I get it though:

 

If I go with a fresh server and new drives, I can just incorporate the old drives to transfer the data onto the new drives?  

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7 minutes ago, ChipBuffalo said:

If I go with a fresh server and new drives, I can just incorporate the old drives to transfer the data onto the new drives?  

IF you pursue  this option, I would install the Unassigned Devices plugin and mount you old drives using that plugin.  Then copy the files from the old drives to the array.

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2 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

IF you pursue  this option, I would install the Unassigned Devices plugin and mount you old drives using that plugin.  Then copy the files from the old drives to the array.

Thank you, that makes sense. Would this also allow me to attach an external HD to grab some of my old home movies onto an external backup?

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4 minutes ago, ChipBuffalo said:

Thank you, that makes sense. Would this also allow me to attach an external HD to grab some of my old home movies onto an external backup?

Yes

 

25 minutes ago, ChipBuffalo said:

So, check that "parity is valid", power down, attach drives and power back up?

No really as I remember it.  There is no powerdown required when doing a new configuration.  I found that there is a section in the manual which describes the use of this option:

 

      https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Storage_Management#Reset_the_array_configuration

 

 

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39 minutes ago, ChipBuffalo said:

If I go with a fresh server and new drives, I can just incorporate the old drives to transfer the data onto the new drives?  

I was not necessarily speaking of a complete new install of the entire system including formatting the drives and rebuilding parity.  I was speaking more in terms of a New Config action the GUI which will preserve your existing data while creating a new disk array with the old drives. 

 

You can certainly start completely from scratch if you wish with new drives and mounting the old ones with Unassigned Devices to transfer data,

 

The New Config will result in you needing to reconfigure unRAID, but will preserve data.

 

Whether or not you do a New Config or start from scratch I highly recommend you move to XFS as the file system for the array drives rather than ReiserFS.

The choice is yours.

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Thank you all for your help. I ended up building a new array with a 4tb parity and 2 2tb drives. Plan on expanding later, but for now this is sufficient for me. 

 

Here is what I am now seeing. I was able to mount the old drives as "Unassigned Devices" and use Midnight Commander to transfer files. Little cumbersome, but working well. I did not realize that the directories were split among the different drives which is adding another level of complication. 

What I am finding is that some of the directories under my main directory "Tower" are not accessible from Windows Explorer. I have "Tower" set as "Private" and have "read/write" permissions set for my user. When I try to get into 2nd level of directories I get a network error message. Using Windows Explorer would be MUCH easier combining fractured folders, but more concerning is that I can't navigate to the files for use. 

 

Any thoughts as to what I am doing wrong?

Capture.JPG

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53 minutes ago, ChipBuffalo said:

What I am finding is that some of the directories under my main directory "Tower" are not accessible from Windows Explorer. I have "Tower" set as "Private" and have "read/write" permissions set for my user. When I try to get into 2nd level of directories I get a network error message. Using Windows Explorer would be MUCH easier combining fractured folders, but more concerning is that I can't navigate to the files for use. 

 

There is no one simple answer to your query.   The reason being is that error message is a very generic one about SMB access failures.

 

Begin by reading this post and follow its advice:

 

        https://forums.unraid.net/topic/89452-windows-issues-with-unraid/page/10/?tab=comments#comment-959725

 

Should that not solve your problems then move onto this post and the next several that follow it:

 

      https://forums.unraid.net/topic/25064-user-share-problem/?tab=comments#comment-228392

 

The first post attempts to resolve security blocks that MS has added to Windows that often have to be resolved.  The second one deals with the actual way that SMB works with user credentials and the way that Windows handles those credentials.  Things can occur in the background that will often feel the poor user without a clue as to what is really happening. 

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21 hours ago, ChipBuffalo said:

When I try to get into 2nd level of directories I get a network error message. Using Windows Explorer would be MUCH easier combining fractured folders, but more concerning is that I can't navigate to the files for use. 

 

I just had an epiphany.  What I saw initially as a pure SMB access issue, I now see could well be a file/directory permission issue.  

 

Were you using mc to copy from a HD mounted with the Unassigned Devices plugin directly to a disk?  (The other way would have been to copy from the Unassigned Device mounted HD to a User Share.)   (Today it is recommended that users use Shares rather individual disk access.  In fact, disk sharing is turned off by default.  Thus, you only have access to User Shares via SMB!) 

 

Check to see that your owner/group and file/directory permissions look like this:

image.png.d34a12742214d5e93a1ef026eff082c1.png

 

I am assuming that you are well enough versed in Linux operations to do this since you were using ver4.3 of Unraid.  (If you need help, just ask.) Oh, there is now a built-in terminal in Unraid, just look for the       >_       on the right side of the Toolbar.

 

IF they are not as indicated, there is a script that will fix the problem called   New Permissions  under  Tools.    Run it only against the User Shares that you are having a problems with.  It can take a long time to run as it will work on every file and directory in the share.  I also seem to recall that it runs 'silently' so wait for it to finish.  I seem to recall that the command line prompt will return when it is done. 

Edited by Frank1940
Grammer
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On 4/22/2021 at 7:18 AM, Frank1940 said:

 

Were you using mc to copy from a HD mounted with the Unassigned Devices plugin directly to a disk?  (The other way would have been to copy from the Unassigned Device mounted HD to a User Share.)   (Today it is recommended that users use Shares rather individual disk access.  In fact, disk sharing is turned off by default.  Thus, you only have access to User Shares via SMB!) 

 

That is exactly what I was doing! I thank you Frank, I will go over this when I am done transferring files. 

Very slow process with MC as it seems I can only do one file at a time. 

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5 minutes ago, ChipBuffalo said:

Very slow process with MC as it seems I can only do one file at a time. 

It has been a long (veeerrry long) time since I have used mc but I would think you should be able to select more that one file (at a time) to moved. Of course, it is probably best that the files be queued as the harddisk head movement overhead would really slow things down!   I seem to recall that I had a manual on mc as well as a cheat sheet of its keyboard shortcuts.  A quick Google should quickly locate these type of items.  

 

I used rsync (command line only) to do a disk-to-disk copy when I converted the disks in my arrays from reiserfs format to XFS format and (as I recall) it took about 8hr per TB of data. 

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I have looked and can not find any help on moving multiple files in MC. I will use your last recommendation to get Windows to see the full directory tree, that would make it much faster. Otherwise, I'm just thankful I did not lose all my files by not backing up the old server correctly. 

 

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On 4/22/2021 at 7:18 AM, Frank1940 said:

 

Check to see that your owner/group and file/directory permissions look like this:

image.png.d34a12742214d5e93a1ef026eff082c1.png

 

 

 

Looks like my permissions are not correct? None should be shared "root", correct?

 

image.png.9db35ef365fccf7e35527e7e3cc17354.png

 

And sorry to say, I was only somewhat familiar with Linux back when I built the thing so long ago. This has been a learning experience for me, to say the least. 

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