Need data migration advice for newbie.

Current setup:

Workstation: lsi raid5 6х4tb hdd

NAS: Unraid array with new 10tb hdd, 2х512nvme cache, no parity at this moment

 

Need to transfer 9tb data from raid to NAS, then break raid in workstation and move all drives to NAS.

Planned final setup:

10tb hdd for parity, 6х4tb hdd data volumes, 2х512nvme cache

 

How to perform this in most efficient way without extra spare hdds or online restore?

 

Do you have backups of anything important and irreplaceable? 

Yes, I have full offsite backup, but with tiny bandwithd, so keeping that for last resort.

Going unprotected while transferring is acceptable.

Edited August 12, 20241 yr by pro100Unraid

10 hours ago, pro100Unraid said:

Going unprotected while transferring is acceptable.

Copy everything to Unraid, leave workstation alone for the moment.

 

Get everything sorted in Unraid the way you want it, leaving the workstation as your local backup while you play. Once you are satisfied with the way Unraid is handling your stuff, then you could move all the drives over, and add them as data disks, leaving the 10TB as is for the moment.

 

At that point you have a choice, copy the files to the various 4TB drives, verify the copy was successful, then set a new config with all the 4TB drives as data drives and the 10TB as parity,

OR,

and this is the better option, add another 10TB as parity and leave well enough alone with just the 10TB data disk for now.

 

Are you familiar with all the different storage setups that Unraid supports? The main reason I suggest copying then leaving the workstation off for a period of time was to allow you a "do over" period if you find out you want to set up Unraid differently. It's a whole lot safer to play around and change things while you still have all your data locally backed up on your workstation.

 

This would be an ideal time to get your local backup situation worked out, maybe sending versioned backups to the workstation instead of tearing it down.

 

Keep in mind that Unraid (or any redundant RAID) is NOT backup, it's only good for a small subset of things that can nuke data. Hardware failure is far less common than accidental deletion or worse, overwriting, or file system corruption.

 

10 hours ago, pro100Unraid said:

Yes, I have full offsite backup, but with tiny bandwithd, so keeping that for last resort.

Now is the time to spend your energy getting local backup sorted.

@JonathanMThank you for extensive reply!

Yes, I understand how unraid differs from other redundant drive storages. And feel that i'm allready familiar withs array, pools, vdevs, and even more zfs support in 7+ version.

I'll split data from current raid: All "fast" data will be at workstation, will add extra 8tb of nvme for that. All "slow" <250mb/s data should be at NAS.

I have 2-3 weeks for "playtime" before moving workstation to smaller case with ssds only.

Adding extra 10TB hdd is simple solution that I was also thinking about, but it would be overkill in total storage space. Other option is selling 6 4tb drives and buing not 1, but 2 extra 10tb instead resulting approximately same storage space.