So, I ordered the backup flash drive; how do I keep it updated with current config?  Do I plug in both flash drives or is there another way to keep the two OS flash drives in sync?

Perhaps someone that understands this better will chime in - but I believe that if you have the "config" directory backed up from the last time you messed with any of the unRAID settings that you will be fine.  For example, copy everything from the //tower/flash/config to your desktop hard disk every time you make a change.  If your flash drive should ever fail, you can take your new one, copy the config directory from the recent backup, update the unRAID OS (if you need to), and boot the array from your new flash.  My only question I would have is about the super.dat file, that seems to update more frequently than the other files.  I am not sure if the absolute latest and greatest of this file is required on the new flash, but I do not think so.

 

UPDATE:  You will also need to put the right ".key" file on the new USB stick before you use it.

 

-Brian

Brian,

 

Thanks for the response--that sounds very reasonable.  I suppose that I could update the backup flash with current config data when I do the monthly backup of my desktop also.

 

Thanks again,

 

Dan 

I think the registration key file for unRaid "Plus" and "Pro" is kept in the config directory, so if you are running either of those, you would not want to transfer the key file from one flash to another, since it is tied to the guid of the flash drive.

 

grandan - that is what I do - regular backups of the flash drive.

I have two flash drives, each with their own key file...

 

However, I keep BOTH key files on both flash drives.  On one of my drives, one them is named "Pro2.key", and the other file named "Pro1.kkeeyy"

 

On the other USB flash drive, I switch the suffixes on the files. It has Pro1.key and Pro2.kkeeyy

 

Tom described to me once that unRaid uses the first "*.key" file it finds in the config folder.  It does not care about the name.  By changing the suffix of the one for the other drive to .kkeeyy, unRaid ignores it.

 

This allows me to copy the entire flash drive from one to the other.  I only need to remember to re-name the "key" files so the correct one has the .key suffix when I make the copy.  Obviously, I also need to copy everything in the root folder of the drive too, since it will get out of date if you deploy a new bzroot and bzimage when Tom issues a new release of unRaid.

 

Joe L.

JRS and Joe L.>

 

Thanks for the advice.  Sounds good; that's what I will try to do.

 

dan