I am oh so close to completing my first unraid build.  Right now I have 2TB of data, so my unraid will consist of a 2TB parity, and 2x 1.5TB drives.  After i move the data over, I will want to move my existing RAID 1 (old box) drives to unraid.  Once i preclear these, I wont need them right away.  Is there any harm in leaving them installed in the hott-swap bays, but unassigned?  I dont want to built my array with 7TB of storage if I only need 3TB right now....

 

Also about copying, I know I should probably mount one of the raid 1 disks in the unraid box and copy that way, but my raid has been flaky lately, so I am concerned about breaking the raid.  So my plan is to use Teracopy and just copy over the network from a mounted network drive (should take about 5 days lol)

 

I plan to not assign the parity drive until AFTER the data copy....  Any advice would be great on all this...  I think I am good with this, I just want to make sure.

 

thanks

Is there any harm in leaving them installed in the hott-swap bays, but unassigned?  I dont want to built my array with 7TB of storage if I only need 3TB right now....

Not that I know of. Couple of things to keep in mind:

[*]If the hard drives are plugged in, they will be spinning and sucking up power. If the drives are not assigned, I don't think there is a way to spin them down. I know unMENU has the option to spin down drives but when I tried that, it would only spin down 1 drive. When I would try to spin down 2nd drive, 1st one would spin up. Maybe I was doing something wrong.

          On the flip side, if you do assign the drives but u don't want unRAID to use them, you can always exclude the drives on the Shares page. This way, you can spin them down.

 

[*]If you add another drive and do a preclear list command, these drives will also show up. Not a big deal if you know the s/n of the existing drives.

 

Also about copying, I know I should probably mount one of the raid 1 disks in the unraid box and copy that way, but my raid has been flaky lately, so I am concerned about breaking the raid.  So my plan is to use Teracopy and just copy over the network from a mounted network drive (should take about 5 days lol)

 

I used TeraCopy's Move function to move about 4 Tb data. Took me few days. I would suggest few hundred GBs at a time. Helps if you already have the directory structure laid out on the source and destination.

 

I plan to not assign the parity drive until AFTER the data copy....  Any advice would be great on all this...  I think I am good with this, I just want to make sure.

That's exactly what I did. If you want to be paranoid, just use TeraCopy's copy to get the data over. Then delete the original files after the parity is done.

 

Good Luck!

Honestly, I would turn on the parity upfront. it may be slower. but it is more secure.

I keep seeing those horror stories of people not using parity for the upfront copy and then realizing something went wrong.. after it was to late.

 

always copy, then delete... not move.

Honestly, I would turn on the parity upfront. it may be slower. but it is more secure.

I keep seeing those horror stories of people not using parity for the upfront copy and then realizing something went wrong.. after it was to late.

 

always copy, then delete... not move.

Agree wholeheartedly, and I would amend the last statement to...

 

always copy, verify, then delete ... not move.

Honestly, I would turn on the parity upfront. it may be slower. but it is more secure.

I keep seeing those horror stories of people not using parity for the upfront copy and then realizing something went wrong.. after it was to late.

 

always copy, then delete... not move.

Agree wholeheartedly, and I would amend the last statement to...

 

always copy, verify, then delete ... not move.

 

Thanks for the advice.  I actually used Unstoppable copier.  My destination is about 1GB smaller than the source, but I dont think thats a huge deal.  Could be some hidden un-needed files in there.  I am running another pass telling it to skip already copied fiiles just to be safe.  I have my data still on my raid 1.  So data loss isnt a concern right now

you could try beyond compare. it has a 30 day free trail. set the compare to "binary" and will tell you whats missing and whats not copied correctly.

you could try beyond compare. it has a 30 day free trail. set the compare to "binary" and will tell you whats missing and whats not copied correctly.

 

Word of caution

 

My manager used Beyong Compare to move 4TB of office data to find out later files were missing. It could have been human error. He did say the compare was good. That experience was enough for me to look at other options.

 

For verification I normally run a ls -ltr into a file. Then I use a text compare utility to find differences. It's slower than other methods but it has never failed me. For copying files I use the gui version of robocopy. This was a recent find and I'm pretty happy with how it works.

That had to be  human error. files/folders would  turn red if missing or not the same

 

Beyond Compare was originally written to sync folders on servers and desktops.

we use it at work to migrate  from dev servers to production servers and to sync with overseas servers were a copy almost always fails.

 

robocopy is very nice. but as you point out, it has no verification method. We use lots of robocopy scripts for ghetto backups.

Is there any harm in leaving them installed in the hott-swap bays, but unassigned?  I dont want to built my array with 7TB of storage if I only need 3TB right now....

Not that I know of. Couple of things to keep in mind:

[*]If the hard drives are plugged in, they will be spinning and sucking up power. If the drives are not assigned, I don't think there is a way to spin them down. I know unMENU has the option to spin down drives but when I tried that, it would only spin down 1 drive. When I would try to spin down 2nd drive, 1st one would spin up. Maybe I was doing something wrong.

          On the flip side, if you do assign the drives but u don't want unRAID to use them, you can always exclude the drives on the Shares page. This way, you can spin them down.

 

[*]If you add another drive and do a preclear list command, these drives will also show up. Not a big deal if you know the s/n of the existing drives.

 

You could add a spindown command to your go script.  See http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7931.0 for details.

I would pre-clear as many disks as I had available.

 

Then leave 1 connected. adding a hdparm spin down command in my go script. (-y)

I would leave the others in the machine disconnected or out of the machine ready to be swapped in when needed.

 

Having one in the machine and in a spin down low powered state would make it easy to remotely re-assign a failed disk and start a rebuild.

 

Having the others in the machine might be a waste of power unless you can put them in an even lower state of power  -Y may be worth examining if you have a power meter.

 

-y Force an IDE drive to immediately enter the low power consumption standby mode, usually causing it to spin down. The current power mode status can be checked using the -C flag.

-Y Force an IDE drive to immediately enter the lowest power consumption sleep mode, causing it to shut down completely. A hard or soft reset is required before the drive can be accessed again (the Linux IDE driver will automatically handle issuing a reset if/when needed). The current power mode status can be checked using the -C flag.

 

also I would use the /dev/disk/by-id/ata- or scsi- designation rather then the /dev/sd? designation.

This way if the drive moves, you do not have to adjust your script.

 

I normally preclear my future drive and install it in my case. I have a CoolerMaster 590 so its kind of a pain in the butt to take a cage out and disconnect everything. So I normally preclear and then unplug my cables to that drive and when I do plan on bringing it on I shutdown, connect cables and turn back on.

 

My way needs no scripts or worries about a spinning drive. Sure I have to reboot to activate, but its in place and ready to use if/when I need it.