Long story short - I accidentally fried my drives when changing out my PSU a few months back. I haven't had a chance to rebuild my server but was hoping to work on this weekend. What's the best way forward?

 

I had one SSD cache drive and four 3.5" drives data all fail. Ideally, I'm hoping to simply get the server back online so I can setup docker for some services I'd like to use. I realize I may need to reconfigure everything but I've accepted that at this point. However, I'd also like to plan for the possibility of recovering the data off my drives in the next couple of weeks.

 

I have a new SSD and two new 3.5' drives. Should I pop them into my tower and set them up as new drives and leave the previous drives untouched in unRAID?

For the array, you can do a new config with the new devices and resync parity, was the cache pool a single device?

Yes, the cache pool was a single device.  And unfortunately the parity drive also died.  So I'm currently without any data at all (cache, parity, and data drives all non-functional in their current state).  I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll be able to recover some of the data after talking to a couple recover specialists.  

 

I know I'm asking a hypothetical here but if I assign my new drives as new drives in unRAID (not replacements for the ones unRAID expects to be there) can I continue using unRAID in the short term as my "old server" without any of the data?  Then, if I'm able to recover the data from the drives, simply pop the old drives in or clone them onto new drives, and have most of my original server as it was?

How did you fry all of the drives with a PSU swap?

Just now, foo_fighter said:

How did you fry all of the drives with a PSU swap?

We have seen it happen a number of times with modular power supplies and users assuming the old cables are compatible with the new one one just because the plugs fit at the PSU end when this in fact this is not the case.

What itimpi said.  I swapped modular PSU's and kept the old drive cables plugged into the drives.  I didn't mean to boot the system up with the old cables still attached but I was in the middle of doing a few things at once.  

20 hours ago, Josh396 said:

I know I'm asking a hypothetical here but if I assign my new drives as new drives in unRAID (not replacements for the ones unRAID expects to be there) can I continue using unRAID in the short term as my "old server" without any of the data?

If you mean keep the old drives as missing, it's not possible, you would need to do a new config with the new drives.