January 4, 20242 yr I am running Unraid on a laptop with one m2 ssd for cache, one sata ssd for parity and two external disks for storage. I want to migrate to another, faster, laptop. This laptop has no sata drive available so I will be putting the parity disk and the two data disks in a USB enclosure. But have some questions first: Will I be able to plug in the USB drive and simply import the disks? Will I need to rebuild parity? Are there any preparations I should do first (disable caching, etc.) except for making a backup? Thanks for your help
January 4, 20242 yr Community Expert USB not recommended for array or pools for many reasons, and SSDs in the parity array cannot be trimmed. You can eliminate some of the problems with USB connections by not assigning a parity disk, since that way there is nothing to get out-of-sync on disconnects. No way to know whether Unraid will recognize the disks with their current assignments, since USB doesn't always give consistent disk identifiers.
January 4, 20242 yr Author Hmm, did not know the SSD's would not be trimmed in a parity array. That is a pretty big issue. As for the USB: I have been running it for about a year now, had no issues with disconnects. I do not think it will be recognized, but will I be able to import the disk(s) to the array? I am assuming that there is some way Unraid can see the disk belonged to an Unraid array?
January 4, 20242 yr Community Expert For best results with USB, look for UASP support. Can you get SMART reports from your current configuration?
January 4, 20242 yr Author I'm sorry, why do I need to attach diagnostics? I have no issues? I want to know if there is a migration path to a new laptop without losing data/starting over.
January 4, 20242 yr Community Expert I was trying to get an answer to 54 minutes ago, trurl said: Can you get SMART reports from your current configuration? and also see how Unraid is currently identifying your disks.
January 4, 20242 yr Community Expert 20 minutes ago, Mark12 said: if there is a migration path Depends on how the different USB implementations in your present and future configuration present the disks. This is some of the reasons USB not recommended. Some USB will not give serial number for disk identification, some will not give SMART reports, some will present the disk with a different size (this is the biggest problem for migration). Looks like parity and disk1 are reporting SMART and the correct size so that is good. Your new configuration must do the same. No report from disk2 so that might be a problem.
January 4, 20242 yr Author Disk two: is it possible there is no report from it because it is not used yet and spinned down? (It is part of the storage array)
January 4, 20242 yr Community Expert Depends on the USB implementation probably. I know I can get SMART reports for all my array disks whether or not they are spun down. I can even get SMART from my USB (UASP) connected external enclosure I use for Unassigned Devices.
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