I will try to keep the background brief to get to the heart of my issue/s. I got my best friend (Brad) into Unraid a few years ago, and he had a pretty awesome server going. He passed away two months ago, and until last weekend when I flew from home (Dallas) to Seattle to help his sister pack up his office it has been up and running and no one has touched it. My intent was to bring it home and set it back up next to mine so his family could still connect to him just like they had before. SO...

 

I didn't know his server password but no problem I can get around that. I power down the server, pull the USB drive (it is super hot), and then proceed to plug it into every computer I have with me. Nothing even recognizes it's plugged in at all. After hours of troubleshooting there I realize I'm going to have to do it at home because it's 6am and my flight leaves soon. I don't have all the stuff I would normally capture like drive assignments by serial number, flash backup, etc so I number all the drives and sata cables 1-6 as I pull them out for transport and just pray.

 

I get home and after trying a few other things I pull the flash drive apart and break out the multimeter. Bad capacitor. I'm PRETTY sure if I just take it off the board it will work long/well enough to copy the data. He also MIGHT have backed up his stuff on the array itself (I checked his laptops and there's no backup of his flash drive anywhere else). So... I'm just overwhelmed and discouraged and unsure of what to do next.

Here are all the things in my head:
1.) Can I create/restore a backup with the backup tool if I only have the files on the flashdrive and not the drive itself?
2.) I haven't really used unassigned devices much before, and only for stuff like flash drives. Will it let me plug in and see data on Brad's unraid drives?

3.) If it will, is there any risk of messing up the parity drive doing that?

4.) What are the unseen things I'm going to bang my head on if I get far enough to recover his thumb drive and boot it back up?

4.) What are the million things I'm missing that if this were my machine I would have thought of already?

 

I realize that is a lot and kind of all over the place, but Brad is literally the one I would have brainstormed something like this with normally... so y'all get the word vomit. Thank in advance for the ideas/input/understanding.

14 minutes ago, snowmangoh said:

Can I create/restore a backup with the backup tool if I only have the files on the flashdrive and not the drive itself?

All you need is the files in the config folder. Don't bother with the tool, you can just copy / paste the files.

16 minutes ago, snowmangoh said:

I haven't really used unassigned devices much before, and only for stuff like flash drives. Will it let me plug in and see data on Brad's unraid drives?

Yes, for parity array drives, maybe for pool drives, depends on whether all the drives that made up a multi volume pool are available. If all the drives are plugged in to a single system it should be fine, but if you are trying to check one drive at a time you may run in to some issues, depending.

18 minutes ago, snowmangoh said:

If it will, is there any risk of messing up the parity drive doing that?

Not if you mount the data drives read only. The parity drive wouldn't mount anyway, but it's no good without all the rest of the data drives, ALL unmodified.

 

20 minutes ago, snowmangoh said:

bring it home and set it back up next to mine so his family could still connect to him just like they had before.

Do you have the entire server or just the drives? This quoted statement makes me think you have the whole thing,

but this

22 minutes ago, snowmangoh said:

I number all the drives and sata cables 1-6 as I pull them out for transport and just pray.

statement makes me think you just brought the drives.

 

What Unraid installed services are you wanting to provide remotely to the family?

 

Do you have access to his email accounts? Did he have an Unraid Connect account?

50 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

statement makes me think you just brought the drives.

Whole thing... I pulled the drives and carried them on the plane. The case went in luggage.

 

 

50 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

What Unraid installed services are you wanting to provide remotely to the family?

I'm still not at the point where I know exactly what all he was running yet. Plex with most of the normal "arr"s behind it for sure... if I can't recover his flash then I'll just be digging around his appdata guessing.

 

 

50 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

Do you have access to his email accounts? Did he have an Unraid Connect account?

I can get access to his main email account. I'm unsure as to if he had an Unraid Connect account.

Thanks Jonathan!

Edited August 6, 20241 yr by snowmangoh

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/troubleshooting/data-recovery/#lost-array-configuration

So I'm having to just move his drives into my array. I found an interesting comment in another thread:

Does that mean there is a way to add one of his disks into my array as a new drive (since he was using unRAID already) and maintain the contents?? That would be a HUGE impact to all of the juggling and math I'm having to do to try and keep all of his data while rolling drive much larger than mine into my existing array.

Edited October 28, 20241 yr by snowmangoh

It sounds like you are looking for 'New Config' and preserving data. Have used it several times for individual arrays.  Not 100% sure if it would work right bringing drives from 2 different array.  Seems like it should, but I do not recommend chancing it without some further confirmation.  

On 10/29/2024 at 3:07 PM, Veah said:

It sounds like you are looking for 'New Config' and preserving data. Have used it several times for individual arrays.  Not 100% sure if it would work right bringing drives from 2 different array.  Seems like it should, but I do not recommend chancing it without some further confirmation.  

Thanks Veah... It wouldn't be an entirely new config... I have my existing array, and want to add a disk from another array while preserving the data on that disk.

You can use the new config tool for that, parity will need to be re-synced.

Thanks guys! I'll do my homework on it... That is huge!