Hello,

I have been the proud owner of my first UNRAID server (4.7) for several months now. I am currently trying to set up my second, which I would like to contain identical data from certain shares from the first. I have seen other posts about this, but they focus more on a regular backup process than the initial copying. So, for the purposes of this discussion, I am not interested in how to maintain regular backups. I am curious as to what the most time-efficient way of moving my data from one UNRAID server to another is. I do not want do this through Windows or OSX, as that is horribly slow. So, I am thinking either:

 

-Place the drives from the new server into the old one, one at a time, and cp the data over. If I do this, though, will I simply be able to put it into the new server and it will be recognized? For instance, if my new drive is disk6 on the old server, and I am copying over information from disk1, will it be able to become disk1 on the new server without a problem?

 

-Connect the two servers together and copy over some other way. I have seen many suggestions for rsync, which I am sure is a better choice than cp. If this is the better way, how can I connect the two servers together? I only have 1 ethernet port available. Is a direct connection enough?

 

I know the top choice wouldn't be most people's recommendation, but it has the benefit of not needing to take the server offline for an extended period of time (beyond adding in the new disks to cp data over). I am by no means an expert on this type of stuff, so feel free to tell me how wrong I am - as long as you provide a better solution

rsync is by far the easiest and least one to jeopardize the current server.

I.E. Unless you have some kind of external USB case that allows you to change the drives easily

 

I have this and I love it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707169

 

Even then, I would tell you to use rsync from one drive to the other.

 

As far as hooking the servers up together, it's possible, but you need a cross over cable and you would need to set static ip addresses on both servers.

 

It would be easier if you could locate a switch. They are pretty cheap in good deals.

By the time you purchase a cross over cable, you could use that to fund a cheap switch.

 

maybe someone would sell you one here.

I got a whole box of them. ;-)

I just built another unRAID server and I'm in the process of copying everything from the old server to the new server.  After searching the forums I found that rsync was the easiest way for me to accomplish this task.

 

Here's the thread that helped me finally get rsync working.  Hope this helps.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=13432.msg127670#msg127670

Gig-E does not require a cross-over cable.

Gig-E does not require a cross-over cable.

 

So from PC to PC direct connect, with Gig-E you would not need a cross over cable?

Any links or details supporting this? Looks like I could learn something new here!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_crossover_cable

 

See the section headed Automatic crossover.  I am sure there are other sources.

Thank you all for your quick and helpful responses!

 

I've primed myself on rsync, and I think I'm good to go. My main point of confusion was how to connect from one server to another - I didn't realize I could just do it through a switch. That information, along with the helpful links, has pushed me in the right direction. I'll let you know if I have anymore trouble, but as far as I can tell I have all of the information I need. Thanks again!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_crossover_cable

 

See the section headed Automatic crossover.  I am sure there are other sources.

 

Ahh.. Auto-MDX.. I had always thought it was implemented on the switches, Never thought it was on the cards.

I'll have to try it out.

Thanks for the lesson!

I have used this EZ-Dock 2.5" / 3.5" SATA Hard Drive USB 2.0 Docking Station (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707171) to quickly mount / dismount hard drives. However, I have not used this in unRAID but I don't why it would not work.

 

If anyone else has any experience with this or similar device, feel free to chime in.

I have used this EZ-Dock 2.5" / 3.5" SATA Hard Drive USB 2.0 Docking Station (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707171) to quickly mount / dismount hard drives. However, I have not used this in unRAID but I don't why it would not work.

 

If anyone else has any experience with this or similar device, feel free to chime in.

 

Those docks work nicely, I have one that has USB and eSATA.

I've used this one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817388022

 

The only issue is you need to have airflow across the drive or could overheat.

 

I've recently bought a 120MM USB fan so that I could blow air across the drive when I use it.

I have been using rsync to copy my data over, and I was successful for a little while, but now I seem to be having problems. Most of the remaining uncopied items give me the following error:

 

WARNING: /path/to/file failed verification -- update discarded (will try again).

Followed later by:

rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at main.c(1031) [sender=3.0.2]

 

This seems to only be with larger files (over 2.5 GBish). Testing the same command with a small file works fine. The command I'm running looks like this:

 

rsync -av --stats --progress /mnt/user/path/to/folder rsync://Tower/mnt/user/path/to

Adding --size-only seemed to fix it, e.g.

 

rsync -av --size-only --stats --progress /mnt/user/path/to/folder rsync://Tower/mnt/user/path/to

I would check the md5sum's of these files before and after.

Something does not seem right.

I've been using rsync for years and have never had that message.

Will a different modification date cause the md5sum to be different? Because that may have been the problem I was running in to.

Will a different modification date cause the md5sum to be different? Because that may have been the problem I was running in to.

 

If it's just the mtime, then that will be synced.

Same with permissions.

 

It reads as if the file might have been updated while it was being compared (rsync does a compare first).