What happens if the USB stick that unraid resides on dies? Will I then be unable to access my data? If I put the software back on another USB stick would that allow me to access my data as it was prior to the other USB failing? Would I have to repurchase the software?

 

How are software updates handled? If I purchased 4.2 now and 4.3 or even 5.0 comes out would I get a free update or would I have to re buy?

 

Has there been any data loss or corruption experienced by anyone using unraid?

I believe that you will find the answers you seek if you search a bit here.  But since I've sometimes forgotten this golden rule of forums, I'll try to answer briefly.  But you will need to serach out official answers to confirm.

 

1 - Tom (the author) sells a second license on a second USB stick for just a few dollars more than a single license.  This will protect you from such a situation.  His official policy is that your license is tied to a specific USB stick.  He has made unofficial comments that he will be reasonable if people experience true hardware failures of their USB sticks.

 

2 - Your license fee entitles you to free updates to unRAID - presumably forever.

 

3 - Data loss / corruption can occur for many reasons.  If your house burns down and takes your unRAID server with it, that would be complete data loss, but not unRAID's fault.  I have yet to read of anyone that has lost data or had corrupted data as a result of using unRAID correctly.  On the contrary, it has prevented data loss for a number of customers.

 

I think I remember one person who lost data.  They had a drive fail, and in attempting to recover pressed the "Restore" button thinking it would restore their data.  Unfortunately, that button has nothing to do with restoring data from parity.  Instead it "Stores a new configuration based on the currently assigned (and working) drives"  It then proceeds to compute parity based on those currently assigned drives forgetting any previous parity calculations built from a prior stored configuration.  I personally think the "Restore" button is poorly labeled.

 

So... if you ever have a drive fail, DO NOT USE THE RESTORE BUTTON. 

 

Only use the restore button if you are removing a drive from the array and want to calculate parity without it, forgetting it (and its data) ever existed.

 

Joe L.