Baron_Harkonnen Posted August 22, 2011 Posted August 22, 2011 Hello everyone, Iam very interested in unRAID since it can give me both redundancy, and yet keep all my drives individually readable. But what troubles me is the recovery proccess: Suppose my machine will die. I will purchase a new one, move all HDDs to the new machine, run unRAID from the thumb drive .... And... What will happen?? It will be a new machine, new hardware....will it recognize the drives and data and will be able to ake it work as it was on the old machine like nothing happened? Or will I have to set everything up again? If so - will I have to format all drives again and buid the array from scratch? Is disk arrangment is important? (like if disk 1 was connected to Sata port 1, disk 2 to port 2 and so on, will I have to connect them the same way on the new machine?) General unrelated to "what if machine dies" question- suppose I have array up and running, and one day decided to take out one drive (I dont know - take it for a trip in external enclosure). When I will put it back in - will the system recognize it again like nothing happened? Will I have to stop the array for the time this one drive is out? Or can I keep the array online and keep working on it (without the drive). If I will add some data to the drive I took out, and put it back in afterwards - will the unRAID try to recover it from parity (delete the files I added manually when drive was out of the array)? Thank you in advance
lionelhutz Posted August 22, 2011 Posted August 22, 2011 Part 1 - You will have to re-assign the drives using up to V4.7. unRAID will show the correct disk in smaller italic letters so you just match it up. The drives should just be recognized with 5.0 without any intervention. Part 2 - It is very highly not recommended to attempt something like that when running a parity drive. The array drives should always stay in the machine as part of a parity protected array. You could do it without the parity but it's still not recommended. Just get an extra USB drive and copy "road content" to it or use something like a Pogoplug to access the data on the road. Peter
Johnm Posted August 22, 2011 Posted August 22, 2011 Hello everyone, Iam very interested in unRAID since it can give me both redundancy, and yet keep all my drives individually readable. But what troubles me is the recovery proccess: Suppose my machine will die. I will purchase a new one, move all HDDs to the new machine, run unRAID from the thumb drive .... And... What will happen?? It will be a new machine, new hardware....will it recognize the drives and data and will be able to ake it work as it was on the old machine like nothing happened? Or will I have to set everything up again? If so - will I have to format all drives again and buid the array from scratch? Is disk arrangment is important? (like if disk 1 was connected to Sata port 1, disk 2 to port 2 and so on, will I have to connect them the same way on the new machine?) short answer Yes.. swap motherboards, drive controllers, physical drive ports, whatever... as long as the hardware is compatible with unraid, your data is still there when you get it back on line. 5x is better at this, just turn the server on. 4x, you just need to reassign the drives. but works also. General unrelated to "what if machine dies" question- suppose I have array up and running, and one day decided to take out one drive (I dont know - take it for a trip in external enclosure). When I will put it back in - will the system recognize it again like nothing happened? Will I have to stop the array for the time this one drive is out? Or can I keep the array online and keep working on it (without the drive). If I will add some data to the drive I took out, and put it back in afterwards - will the unRAID try to recover it from parity (delete the files I added manually when drive was out of the array)? Thank you in advance Short answer, No! don't do that! it will invalidate parity and leave your array unprotected while that disk is "missing" Note, you technically could do that then rebuild parity. but then you don't know if the existing data on both that disk and the rest of the disks in the array is truly good anymore and you remove the possibility of fixing it. so.. still no. Buy a portable drive... or put an older one in a cheap external enclosure...
Baron_Harkonnen Posted August 22, 2011 Author Posted August 22, 2011 got it! will not swap out drives ! Thanks! btw - do you think i should use the 5 beta version, or better stick with 4.7 final for now?
Johnm Posted August 22, 2011 Posted August 22, 2011 got it! will not swap out drives ! Thanks! btw - do you think i should use the 5 beta version, or better stick with 4.7 final for now? 4.7 would be recommended for stability and support. if you want 5x and dont need 3TB support, I like 5beta6a but 5beta9 seems pretty stable if you want 3TB. I'd stay away from AFP for now (b10 & b11). Also 5b9 has a major bugfix found in 4.7 and 5b6.. so.. Also some hardware might need 5Bxx to run.
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