I have an unraid server I am replacing, looking to upgrade everything. I'm moving from a j5005 with 4x 2.5" drives to a proper rack server with an 8x3.5 backplane, and I'm upgrading my cache drive and my app data drive pool to their own 1TB SSDs. 

 

What is the fastest/easiest way to accomplish this? I'm willing to spend on another unraid license to attach all the drives for the build if needed. The new drives are SAS and I can't plug them into the existing server. I also can't plug in all of the existing drives at one time to the new server. Is there a way to just clone all the data over onto the new drives and then export/import my config to a new USB drive?

 

Oh yeah, the boot USB drive will also need to be replaced, since the old one is a custom made Disk-on-Module and I don't have a USB header on the new mobo to plug it into.

 

Also I'm going from a bare metal install of unraid to a guest VM on ESXi.

 

What's the order of operations here in order to do this and not risk data loss from screwing it up?

Edited November 30, 20223 yr by SimplifyAndAddCoffee

It is worth pointing out that all array drives in Unraid have a self-contained file system that can easily be individually mounted and read outside the originating Unraid system.

including cache drive? 

 

is there a way to lock the state of things so the original configuration can't be altered or broken in the process of migrating data to new drives? What about exporting/importing the docker containers and configurations? plugins? etc. If I clone the original boot drive, can it be adapted to associate new drives and pools on a new controller without breaking anything?