Disk Formatting?

[Fogey]

I'm considering switching my Linux server to UnRaid. I built it as a lockdown project, but at present, its only used as a Plex Media Server, so I might as well change it to UnRaid and avoid the regular fiddling about keeping Ubuntu up to date.

Currently I have 4 drives formatted as EXT4. When I read the Introduction to UnRaid it says 'Unraid can manage an array of drives (connected via IDE, SATA, or SAS) that vary in size, speed, brand, and filesystem". Yet it also talks about formatting drives. Obviously with 4 nearly full drives, I of around 20 TB I don't want to lose data or take on a massive transcoding job..

My questions are:

 

1. Am I correct that I'd have to reformat all 4 existing drives, or just the new drive I'll buy as the parity drive?

2. If I have to format them all, is there a way of temporarily hanging them off the system as EXT4 drives so that I can copy from them onto an UnRaid Formatted drive?

 

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

Cheers Fogey

[Squid]

Unraid doesn't support EXT4 as part of the array.  You'll wind up assigning an empty drive to the array, copying the files over from your EXT4 drive (mounted via Unassigned Devices), wash - rinse - repeat until the last drive is done and then assign the last one as parity.

[Fogey]

Thanks so much for your quick response, Squid.

 

So as I understand your comments, (I'm in my mid 70's so am not as quick as I once was at this stuff) I'll put in my new 8TB Drive as parity, and then another drive as the first data drive. The remaining 3 drives will then be unassigned drives, but I can copy the data over to the first data drive. When I do that and empty an unassigned drive, I can then assign it to the array - and so on.

 

Now it makes a lot of sense.  Just one tiny question - can the parity drive store data, or is it reserved for keeping track of the other data drives?

 

Thanks, Fogey

 

[trurl]

Parity has no data, not even a filesystem so it isn't even formatted, just a partition with a bunch of bits that allow a missing disk to be calculated from all the other disks. Unraid takes care of all that when you assign a disk to Parity.