Removing all discs and starting a new array. Anything I should know?

[superderpbro]

I am retiring all of my old drives and starting over with new ones. I should be done all my preclearing in a couple days. Is there anything I should know?

 

Do I need to do anything more than just removing the current drives? Or are there necessary steps to nuke a pool?

 

I'll be turning off all my dockers and setting them to not start at boot. Not starting them until I get everything set up. What about shares? Will I need to recreate them exactly? Or will they just be recreated when I define a new pool?

 

I actually really want to start completely fresh. Like a clean install of windows. Is that a good/bad idea? Setting up sonar, nzbget and plex would be a pain. I remember it being really frustrating for me the first time. But I'm sure I could do it.

 

Is it better to have one big share or multiple shares? I currently have multiple but have always wanted to just have one big one to mount in my Windows PCs.

 

In preparation of retiring my drives I've gotten rid of all the data hoarding crap and then backed everything onto a single 8TB drive (important stuff is also in the cloud) using free file sync over the network. The drive is NTFS and is connected to my gaming PC. Can I just put it in my UNRAID box as an unassigned drive and transfer the data to the new array from there? Once I've done that would it be better to format it to a Linux file system if I'd like to leave it there as an unassigned drive?

 

My boot flash has been running for like 6 years. Is it a good time to replace it? Or just keep backing it up regularly. I do once a week. How long do cheap flash drives typically last?

 

Thanks for any help you can provide

Edited April 7, 2022 by superderpbro

[Vr2Io]

2 hours ago, superderpbro said:

What about shares?

Share just a directory, when copy back data, share will appear again.

 

2 hours ago, superderpbro said:

My boot flash has been running for like 6 years. I

Suggest replace it.

 

2 hours ago, superderpbro said:

Is it better to have one big share or multiple shares?

You can reorganized the directory to subdirectory or vise reverse, so not a big deal for change.

[trurl]

3 hours ago, superderpbro said:

I'll be turning off all my dockers and setting them to not start at boot.

Better to disable Docker and VM Manager in Settings so these services don't start. If you allow them to start, even if no containers or VMs start, these services will access or create files according to the settings for those.

 

3 hours ago, superderpbro said:

Is it better to have one big share or multiple shares? I currently have multiple but have always wanted to just have one big one to mount in my Windows PCs.

Separate shares allow you to have different settings for different file purposes. A new feature of Unassigned Devices lets you setup a "rootshare" that includes all the user shares.

 

3 hours ago, superderpbro said:

My boot flash has been running for like 6 years. Is it a good time to replace it? Or just keep backing it up regularly. I do once a week. How long do cheap flash drives typically last?

If it ain't broke don't fix it. Why do a license transfer if you don't need to?

 

Better than regular backups are automatic backups. Any change in the webUI makes a change to flash that would be lost if not backed up.

 

Both of my flash drives are over 7 years old.

[superderpbro]

Thanks guys

 

So if I just power down, remove the discs and power back up with new discs .. that's all I need to do to remove the pool? 

 

As far as completely starting over.. What would be the best way to do that? (I probably won't.... but I want to..... lol)

[trurl]

8 minutes ago, superderpbro said:

power down, remove the discs and power back up with new discs .. that's all I need to do to remove the pool?

Unraid will still expect to find your assigned disks. You can delete config/super.dat from flash and you will have no disk assignments.

 

9 minutes ago, superderpbro said:

completely starting over

A new install to flash, keeping your license .key file from the config folder.

 

If you want to keep your data and nothing else, a new install to flash, also keeping super.dat (your disk assignments) from the config folder. Then you could simply replace and rebuild each drive one at a time.

 

You can probably work through whatever changes you want without a clean install. Unraid is always a fresh install at each boot, applying whatever settings you have made in the webUI to that fresh install at boot. It doesn't accumulate a bunch of stuff you don't know what it is or how to get rid of it like Windows does.

[superderpbro]

Okay. Thanks again