Best way to 'start over' but only keep my media data which is stored on a single drive?

[krs360]

Hello all,

 

So I have 5 drive in my array, four data drives and one parity drive.

 

Last month my cache drive died and ever since then, no matter what I do Unraid continues to try and write to it even though there isn't a single thing that still points to it. I had to manually create an appdata folder one one of the drivers and manually change all of the dockers, it became a real pain.

 

Anyway, I also got some new hardware for my main machine, 13900k, etc so the 9900k machine is now tree to become the server. I'm wanting to do a complete fresh start, but keep my movies, the rest of the data just isn't important. The only issue is that I don't have a spare 4TB drive to copy the movie/tv show data on to. All of the data is stored on a single drive (this was intentional).

 

I'm wanting to remove ALL of the data on the drives apart from my movies, etc. What would be the best way to go about this? The catch is that I don't currently have a spare 4tb drive to move the media and unraid has taken to crashing every 30 minutes or so which would make copying difficult. Is it possible for me to format three of the data drives and start a whole new config including the drive that contains the movies and the three formatted drives, or will this cause issues? I love unraid but I don't fully understand how the data is stored and if this is possible or not.

 

Appreciate any help with this.

 

[EDIT]

 

I did have a little look with the new hardware in tonight but even basic things like "auto start array" despite being on, just doesn't work so I know saving what's there makes sense but I'm honestly losing very little and I'm happy to start fresh on this new hardware.

Edited September 14, 2023 by krs360
added more.

[ryanakata]

You don't have to move anything, it's super easy to do, however, what is still trying to write to cache?

 

You may need to check your docker and vm settings if it's trying to find the docker.img that may have been there.

 

But in Unraid settings, just go hit new config and add drives without the cache there. 

[krs360]

Hey there,

 

Thanks for the reply. Anything docker related seemed to be trying to write to the non existent cache drive, even after the new configuration and its removal.

 

it seemed to think appdata was on the cache drive even though the share was told it was only on the array. Even tried using mover etc to see if that would trigger anything to fix itself.

 

The only way I could get around this as a temp measure was to make my own appdata folder and copy the appdata docker folders into that.

 

I had also made sure to remove the docker image and recreate it somewhere other than the cache drive but no joy.

 

I gave up in the end and today I’ve been going through removing everything from the drives, apart from my media folders. I’m then going to make a new USB and start fresh from there.

 

I am hoping within the best hour or so that I’ll have unraid back up and running on better hardware and without any strange issues.

[ryanakata]

Any luck?  I know there's a spot in the settings for the docker img location.  Just wondering if that's mapped directly to /cache/ even if the share is set to the disks?

 

I know when replacing drives the mover does not move the .img file even with docker disabled so I feel like something has to be set to the old /cache/ location.

 

New USB wouldn't be hard to test just to see if it helps, if your new docker img is on the array then it should pick up everything and just start if the disks are in the right order.

[trurl]

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[krs360]

On 9/15/2023 at 8:42 PM, ryanakata said:

Any luck?  I know there's a spot in the settings for the docker img location.  Just wondering if that's mapped directly to /cache/ even if the share is set to the disks?

 

I know when replacing drives the mover does not move the .img file even with docker disabled so I feel like something has to be set to the old /cache/ location.

 

New USB wouldn't be hard to test just to see if it helps, if your new docker img is on the array then it should pick up everything and just start if the disks are in the right order.

 

Hey, sorry for the late reply.

 

I ended up buying some new hardware for my main desktop, 13900k, etc which meant the 9900k system was going spare. I repurposed this to be my server. Made a fresh USB for Unraid and went through and manually removed all of the Unraid folders from the array.

 

I suspect a new USB/Config would've sorted it but honestly I was only interested in keeping my media.

 

Normal service has resumed.