Building a new unraid server.

[Triplerinse]

i have built a new unraid server and wanted to simplify things to just a few dockers and no vms lowering power consumption and down graded cpu. Just wanting to start fresh from the very begging no app data and new flash drive.  I have a decent array 68 tb usable and 30 some used. new install of unraid. Can i just take the drives in the old machine move them to the new machine and do a new config matching the config of the old server. Will this keep my data intact or do i have use unassigned drives and move the data one drive at a time?

[Hoopster]

2 minutes ago, Triplerinse said:

Can i just take the drives in the old machine move them to the new machine and do a new config matching the config of the old server.

If all the drives/data are the same and you will have the same cache/pool drives as well, you technically do not even need to do a new config.  Of course, you can delete and recreate docker.img and start over completely with docker containers or, install just the ones you want from Previous Apps in the Apps tab.

 

Unraid does not need to be "re-installed" if you are using the same licensed flash drive and just moving it to a new machine with all the same disks.  If you do need to change some disk confguration, then yes, you can do a new config and assign all the disks you are keeping to the same disk slots they are in currently.  Be especially careful to make sure parity disk(s) are properly assigned and you don't accidentally assign a data disk to parity.

[Triplerinse]

8 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

If all the drives/data are the same and you will have the same cache/pool drives as well, you technically do not even need to do a new config.  Of course, you can delete and recreate docker.img and start over completely with docker containers or, install just the ones you want from Previous Apps in the Apps tab.

 

Unraid does not need to be "re-installed" if you are using the same licensed flash drive and just moving it to a new machine with all the same disks.  If you do need to change some disk confguration, then yes, you can do a new config and assign all the disks you are keeping to the same disk slots they are in currently.  Be especially careful to make sure parity disk(s) are properly assigned and you don't accidentally assign a data disk to parity.

i know its odd to do this! But im just wanting to start from brand new install. New flash, new cash drive, new everything but keep data on drives. im fine with redoing dockers since i not going to install all of them again. Maybe its not the best course of action but i was on 6.9.2 before and when i moved to 6.10 weird things started to happen. Drives were renamed (outside of the array) and smart data on one drive 1tb hdd was showing on a 280gb ssd.

[Frank1940]

Get screenshots of the MAIN tab for the present disk assignments.  Then do screen shots of all other tabs where there are settings that you might want to carry over to the new server.  Also go through the SETTINGS tab and get any screenshots of setting there.  (You might not need all of them but having a few that you don't need is an lot less aggravating than not having one you want.)  I personally would print them out on paper as I am old and prefer it but you could save them as .jpg or .pdf files. 

 

Use a trial license until you get everything working.  Then you can transfer your current  license to the new flash drive unless you want two licenses. 

[Triplerinse]

3 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

Get screenshots of the MAIN tab for the present disk assignments.  Then do screen shots of all other tabs where there are settings that you might want to carry over to the new server.  Also go through the SETTINGS tab and get any screenshots of setting there.  (You might not need all of them but having a few that you don't need is an lot less aggravating than not having one you want.)  I personally would print them out on paper as I am old and prefer it but you could save them as .jpg or .pdf files. 

 

Use a trial license until you get everything working.  Then you can transfer your current  license to the new flash drive unless you want two licenses. 

Thanks for the info. This was my main plan and figured this was how it should go but wanted to double check before proceeding.  Printing them out would be a good idea for future incase something happed to the drive I had the jpg stored on my main computer for a backup.

 

  Is there any special check box to say keep the data on the drives and not format for the array. 

[Frank1940]

39 minutes ago, Triplerinse said:

  Is there any special check box to say keep the data on the drives and not format for the array. 

I have never done this.  I believe the basic instructions are here:

 

     https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Storage_Management#Reset_the_array_configuration

 

I will ping  @JorgeB and perhaps he will confirm.  (In any case, be sure that if you are asked to format any disk that contains good data that you want to keep---  DON'T DO THAT FORMAT!!!!  Also, never do this type of updating when you are tired.  It is far too easy to make a mistake!)

 

Also, I would run a non-correcting parity check while the data drives are still in the old server.   IF any problems or errors are found, address them before you pull the drives. 

[itimpi]

2 hours ago, Triplerinse said:

Is there any special check box to say keep the data on the drives and not format for the array. 

No checkbox needed as Unraid will recognise drives that have been used by Unraid and already have data on them and will simply add them untouched.    In fact you have to take additional action (e.g. reformat) on them to get them reset to an empty file system.

[Triplerinse]

On 4/18/2023 at 4:32 PM, itimpi said:

No checkbox needed as Unraid will recognise drives that have been used by Unraid and already have data on them and will simply add them untouched.    In fact you have to take additional action (e.g. reformat) on them to get them reset to an empty file system.

got eveything up and running on 6.11.5 went shares popped up and everything was looking good. Did a parity build and then started to test files transfters. 

files seem to transfer fine but then i see this in the logs

Apr 21 15:11:37  smbd[16202]: [2023/04/21 17:11:37.307830, 0] ../../source3/smbd/files.c:1199(synthetic_pathref)

Apr 21 15:11:37 smbd[16202]: synthetic_pathref: opening [4k Movies/Babylon.mkv] failed

it seems like any time i transfer a file it has issues. I also have diagnostics if that would help. 

Also it seems that when i logon to the webgui some times random disk spin up even though no files are being accessed.