Hi all,

 

I have a question after upgrading the hardware in my unRAID-server, but first I layout the scenario/history:

 

After reading about unRAID I decided to try it for my self.

 

I borrowed an older (3 year old) computer from a friend that could boot from a USB-key.

 

I bought 2 x WD 250 GB SATA hard drives + I had an old 30 GB ATA drive laying around.

 

I hooked everything up, and this setup has been working great for a month.

 

 

Now it was time to buy my own hardware.

 

I have bought the following:

 

3,33 ghz Celeron CPU

Abit AB9 Pro

2x512MB memory, Kingston Value

Corsair 450W PSU

An really old PCI video-card I had

An old tower chassis

 

I can boot up on the USB-key and it seems that everything is working fine.

 

Except the 30GB ATA drive won’t work on this motherboard (as stated in http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=726.0), but I can live with that.

 

 

Now, after booting up my new setup every disk is “missing”.

 

I’m concerned about losing the data from the 30GB ATA drive, as I’m not able to hook up this drive on the new setup.

 

Under “devices” > “disk devices” I can select my SATA disks from the drop down box.

 

But I’m afraid if I do select the two SATA disks I will somehow, loose data? I know I have to assign the correct drive for parity and data.

 

How do I avoid loosing any data? Do I just go ahead and select the drives for parity/data? Will I still be able to se the data from the 30GB ATA drive via the parity-data? 

 

Thanks.

 

Cheers,

Søren

Denmark

You are correct.  You need to assign the two SATA drives.  Be certain you assign the parity drive to the parity slot and the data drive to its slot. 

 

You can leave the third slot unassigned for the short term.

 

 

When you return to the main admin page you should see the 30 gig drive as missing.  You should be able to start the array.

 

DO NOT "Restore" the array as that button is mislabeled... It will initialize the array based on the currently assigned disks and force a re-calc of parity.  If you do that before copying the data off the "missing" 30 Gig drive you will lose the ability to get to that data via the remaining parity and data drive.

 

Once the array is started it should be able to copy the files off the "missing" 30 Gig drive to the 250 Gig drive, or some other drive on your LAN.

 

Once the files on the 30 Gig drive are safely stored elsewhere, you can stop the array, and then check the checkbox affiliated with the "Restore" button, and then press it.  UnRaid will forget the 30 Gig drive was ever in the array and rebuild parity based on the one remaining data drive.    Once parity is rebuilt, you can add other drives.

 

Whatever you do, do not format any drives until you get to this point.  You have been working with an array that basically has had a disk fail. (you removed it, but to unraid, it failed)  You need to get it back to a normal state as soon as reasonable.

 

As an alternative to all this, you could add a new drive in place of the "missing" 30 Gig drive.  unRaid would use the parity drive and the other 250 Gig drive to rebuild the contents of the 30 Gig drive onto it.  The replacement will have to be bigger than 30 Gig.

 

If the replacement is bigger than 250 Gig (your existing parity drive), assign it in the parity slot, assign the old parity drive as the data drive in the old 30 Gig slot.  unRaid will do a parity swap. (Copy parity from the old parity drive to the new, then rebuild the old 30 Gig contents on the old parity drive now re-assigned for data use.)

 

Joe L.

Joe, thank you very much for your help 

 

Cheers

Søren