Understanding license disk limits

[digilink]

Hello,

      I am trialing an Unraid install at the moment. My system has the following drives in it:

array:
1x 8TB (parity)
3x 6tb (data)

cache pool:
2x 500gb SSD

Unassigned drive:
1x 500gb NVME

I am looking at getting the Starter License (at least for now), but do the device count limits count towards all disks, or just those in the array? I am not real clear on this.

[itimpi]

All drives attached to the machine (except the boot flash drive) count at the point you start the array regardless of whether Unraid is using them.  Your example shows 7 drives attached.

[digilink]

Thank you, that was my initial impression so I appreciate the clarification!

[docbillnet]

Oh.  This is concerning.  So this means if I am using something like an F4-423, and filling in the drives and NVMe's, I would be unable to use my USB ports to backup data?

 

[itimpi]

2 minutes ago, riem7784 said:

Oh.  This is concerning.  So this means if I am using something like an F4-423, and filling in the drives and NVMe's, I would be unable to use my USB ports to backup data?

You can plug in removable drives AFTER the array has been started as the licence limit applies to the drives that are plugged in at the point the array is starting.  Since you do not mention whether drives connected via USB are permanently attached or not cannot know if you will be affected.

[docbillnet]

4 hours ago, itimpi said:

You can plug in removable drives AFTER the array has been started as the licence limit applies to the drives that are plugged in at the point the array is starting.  Since you do not mention whether drives connected via USB are permanently attached or not cannot know if you will be affected.

Oh.  That is certainly a reasonable limitation.  I really do not know the scenario where I would plugin a USB device, since I have network access at the same speeds or better...

One that comes to mind is if I wanted to migrate a disk from zfs to btrfs or visa versa.  I might format an external drive in the desired format, copy the data to that external drive and they copy the raw disk back.   But there might be a more efficient way to convert file system formats.