Migrating to unRAID - Questions to Ease my Anxiety

[trurl]

9 minutes ago, manofoz said:

Does this apply when starting empty? Pre-clear my bran new drives before setting anything up?

Probably a good idea since you are introducing a lot of untested drives all at once.

 

When I am just adding or replacing a single disk in an array that I know is working well, I often don't preclear since clear (when adding) or rebuild (when replacing) will exercise the disk pretty well. But I have good (enough) backups and a good idea how to recover.

[Frank1940]

1 minute ago, manofoz said:

OK sounds like I should definitely preclear the used drives and maybe even the new ones for a "smoke test" before adding them to the array. Does this apply when starting empty? Pre-clear my bran new drives before setting anything up?  

 

Depends on your level of paranoid.  😈   I have not seen a lot of threads in the past two or three years from people who precleared new disks where the preclear found errors that they are concerned about.  I  usually do it because I want a cold spare-- often a brand new disk --on hand for those instances where a disk has been 'X'ed' out of the array.  I will then rebuilt on the cold spare rather than rebuilding on the disk that was just blocked.  (This is the standard suggestion in these cases.)  By doing this way, if the rebuilt is not successful, I have that old disk to make a second attempt to recover as much data as possible.

[manofoz]

9 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

 

Depends on your level of paranoid.  😈   I have not seen a lot of threads in the past two or three years from people who precleared new disks where the preclear found errors that they are concerned about.  I  usually do it because I want a cold spare-- often a brand new disk --on hand for those instances where a disk has been 'X'ed' out of the array.  I will then rebuilt on the cold spare rather than rebuilding on the disk that was just blocked.  (This is the standard suggestion in these cases.)  By doing this way, if the rebuilt is not successful, I have that old disk to make a second attempt to recover as much data as possible.

That's a good idea. Can you rebuild on a disk that is a different size? Right now I have a range of sizes from 4TB - 20TB and I may eventually get to the point where everything is the same size and speed but to start it'll be a bit of a potluck... If I was to have a spare on hand I'd like to be able to just have a spare of the largest size drive I have which would hopefully cover any that needed to be rebuilt. 

[trurl]

3 minutes ago, manofoz said:

Can you rebuild on a disk that is a different size?

A replacement disk must be the same size or larger than the original, but not larger than either parity disk.

[itimpi]

3 hours ago, manofoz said:

Pre-clear my bran new drives before setting anything up? 

This would not harm (although it is time consuming).   It is not unheard of for brand new drives to fail almost immediately, particularly if they have had any rough handling in transit to you.   

[Lolight]

12 hours ago, manofoz said:

Good to know, thank you! I will probably just use the HBA as the cables are a bit smaller.

As @trurl has already mentioned, add enough of HDD space in bigger disks to hold your existing data.

Don't add every disk to the array unless you start running out of room.

 

Your proposed motherboard will have 6 SATA ports.

If you don't need to use more than 6 disks at the moment then connect them to the mobo and save on electricity.

You will always be able to add the HBA card later on.

[Lolight]

12 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

I would definitely follow @trurl's suggestion and not add any more drives than you need for current storage.  Put any extra drives in anti-static bags and put them on a shelve until you need to add them.

A good advice on placing HDDs in anti-static bags when in storage - also keeping them away from direct sunlight and wide temperature swings.

If stored for a long time, then they would need to be periodically spun up for a few minutes, preferably once a year.

Edited September 11, 2023 by Lolight

[manofoz]

Since this is post has died down I will wrap up what my takeaways. Big thanks to everyone who provided feedback!

 

1. Should I be using 1 or 2 disks for Parity?

 

Yes, better safe than sorry and I have the space.

 

2. Should my Parity drives be plugged directly into my motherboards SATA ports or is the HBA fine?

 

Doesn't matter, use mobo until you need more ports and then add the HBA. 

 

3. Should I pre-organize my data before the transfer?

 

I have organized my library according to these guidelines: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200381043-multi-version-movies. It took 18 hours for my automated process to run and group/move/rename all of the movies but I should be collision free for the migration. I read in another post that this setup doesn't work great with *arrs because they only support keeping the highest quality version of a media file, they don't support multi-versions like Plex. I will cross that bridge when I come to it. 

 

4. Should each video file be in it's own folder?

Yes, see #3 - I have already organized them into their own folders based off of Plex guidelines.

 

5. How much do I need to worry about User Shares and Split Level configurations?

 

Using user shares for different types of files seems like a good idea. I will start with Movies, TV Shows, and Photos. I don't need to worry about split level as much because I have large drives and none of my media is multi-part files. 

 

6. Will using Krusader to copy files unbalance the drives? Should I use Midnight Commander instead?

 

Dynamix File Manager is another alternative to check out. Unclear if Krusader has poor behavior for a large transfer. Wil do more research before the initial migration. Data will be transferred from unassigned NTFS drives formated in Windows (some external) to the array and once the transfer is complete the drive will be precleared and added to the array. 

 

7. Is having two 2x2TB Raid 1 Cache Pools a bad idea?

 

Good idea but do not use the cache pool during the initial data transfer because it will just fill up. Will see how configuration looks like when I go to set things up. Hopefully it is straightforward to add a Raid 1 cache pool and stop things from hitting it before the array temporarily. 

 

Thank you for the help! Any additional feedback would be great. I'll post my build in the show off thread once everything is done.

[JonathanM]

1 hour ago, manofoz said:

Hopefully it is straightforward to add a Raid 1 cache pool and stop things from hitting it before the array temporarily. 

Shares are assigned the pool functionality in their config screen. You can easily set your movies tv shows and photos to go directly to the final destination until the initial load out it is done, then switch at any time.