If your screenshot of the drives is still accurate, you have 5TB free, which is bigger than the current biggest disk. Meaning you don't need any other ones.

 

What I would do, in the screenshot, disk 3 has 1.29TB on it, while the free space on disk 1 is 1.53TB. So use Midnight Commander to move everything inside /mnt/disk3 to /mnt/disk1 (everything from disk 3 to disk 1). After that, re-format drive 3 to XFS. Move everything from disk 1 to disk 3, re-format disk 1. Move contents of another disk to disk 1, re-format that disk, move contents to that disk, and so on.

I'm almost ready to begin moving stuff around.  I tested the RemMove command and in the parameter screen that pops up there an option (ON by default) "using shell patterns" - what is it and should I leave it on. Also should I set "Dive into subdirs if exists" ?

Also: is there a fallback if the move stop before it completes.

 

Thanks, tzotz

 

On 1/29/2025 at 4:44 PM, tzotz said:

"using shell patterns" - what is it and should I leave it on. Also should I set "Dive into subdirs if exists" ?

Also: is there a fallback if the move stop before it completes.

'Shell patterns' are wildcards (e.g. * means everything, A* means every name starting with A, A?C means substitute anything for the 2nd letter as long as the first and third are A and C) so you'll want to leave that on.

 

Dive into subdir means if a directory already exists, it will move the directory into that directory. In other words, if you're moving a folder named A, but on the target A already exists, it will first go in the directory, and then move it, so instead of moving from A to A, it moves to A/A, so you'll want that off.

 

If MC is unable to move something, it will show a message asking you what to do, like when a file or folder already exists. It'll ask you if you want to overwrite it, and below that you can set options for the rest of the files, so if you want to overwrite all the files, you can set it there and it won't ask again.

 

If the procedure doesn't complete, if you close MC accidentally for example, MC only deletes files at the end, so then two copies of the files exist, on the source and the target drive. So when you restart moving files, you'd get a lot of 'file already exists, what do you want to do?' windows.

 

Another potential issue, I like to split things up, so say I have to move A, but A has 100 directories, I'll manually make directory A on the target, and then go into A on source and target, and move things 10 at a time, but creating A means making it under the account you're using (often root), so this can mess up permissions. When this happens, unraid has a tool for it, you can run 'new permissions' under tools which can help fix that.

Thanks Wody for this explanation and info, Best tzotz

Hi,

The process of migrating my unRaid array to the XFS file system is now complete.

I’d like to thank all of you unRaiders that contributed to this thread sharing your knowledge and experience to help this newbie save his array from reiserfs extinction (-:

For my peace of mind, I needed more info about the detailed steps you outlined and added to my knowhow watching a number of YouTube videos and, would you believe it, from Windows Copilot that provided fast valuable responses to my questions.

There’s one deviation I took from using the proposed tool (mc) for moving the files.  I experimented with mc and liked it but I was concerned that using mc to move over 2 TB files over a period of over 24 hours the risk of some sort of process interruption is not negligible and “sifting through the rubble” left over after such interruption in order to return to state 0 is something I liked to avoid.  I then opted to move the files using the rsync utility that is designed to restart, if interrupted, from where it left off.

 

For those interested in taking the same or similar migration path, the details are in the The FS migration process steps.pdf file attached.

 

Again, thank you all,

 

Best, tzotz

The FS migration process steps.pdf

15 hours ago, tzotz said:

I experimented with mc and liked it but I was concerned that using mc to move over 2 TB files over a period of over 24 hours the risk of some sort of process interruption

Exactly why I recommended this

On 1/23/2025 at 1:40 PM, trurl said:

Unless you are going to work with mc or command line from a keyboard and monitor attached to the server, I recommend installing this plugin:

 

Many thanks trurl, good to know, your help is always appreciated. 🙏 

Glad you were able to get your data off reiserfs @tzotz.   You rock @trurl!