I'm going to setup a trial rig to try unraid out. My question is, if I use a dinky usb stick i have laying around to start with the free trial version of unraid, load a couple drives, start transferring data to them, and then at some point switch to a GUID enabled/reliable USB stick without having to restart the process of loading data to the drives. i.e. will switching to a new usb stick cause unraid to clear the drives and reformat them, or will the new stick just recognize it and accept them -- allowing me to continue adding drives? Thanks!

You can copy the config and super.dat files from the old USB stick, or go ito the drive assignment page on the new and re-assign and re-calculate parity.

 

You would not lose data in either case unless you assigned a data drive as your parity drive in error in the transition and asked unRaid to treat the array as new and re-calculate parity. 

 

So, as long as you re-assign parity as parity, and the data drives as data, you will be fine.

 

Unless there is a need to swap the USB stick, a small one is as good as any.  There is really no need to replace it with a larger one unless you intend to add your own packages and software to it.  The initial drives Tom supplied were 128 Meg, it might be hard to find one that small now, but a 512 meg or 1 gig is plenty big enough.

 

Joe L.

thanks for the reply. as for your last comment, i didn't mean that i wanted to replace it later with a larger one... but presumably the "suggested" ones are more reliable? i was going to get started with a random USB stick i had laying around but since it seems that if a usb stick fails you have to rebuy the license I didn't want to continue with the cheapo one once I purchased a license.... is my thinking correct?