Hello,

 

I am currently running an old unRAID 6.9.2 setup with a Basic licence (funny enough that licence will turn 10 years in 2 weeks). I also want to stay with unRAID, but exchange the disks as they are quite filled up (moving from 5 data drives + Cache to 4 + Cache and also using bigger drives), so I am not entirely sure what is my best method here. I'm only using user shares and xfs as filesystem on the disks.

 

My current motherboard is using 6 SATA connectors (5xHDD,1xSSD). The new one has 5 SATA connectors + an NVMe slot. 

 

One idea  was to setup a new unRAID box with the new drives (using the free trial) and then copy over data from the old box to the new one. Also using this to sort my data as I guess there are a bunch of duplicates in there. Then after finishing this turn off the old system, move the USB stick to the new one and be done? Or will this be problematic to exchange USB sticks as the current system uses the old 6.9 version while a new one would be version 7?

 

The other idea was to place the old drives and my USB stick into the new machine and exchange one disk after the other for bigger ones, starting with parity, or will this not be a good idea? This would be a little janky first as I can only fit 4 drives into the new case, so one drive would need to be placed kind of outside, not ideal... In this case I would also need guidance on how I can move all data of one disk to others, so I will safely be able to size down to 4 disks total.

I would leave out the SSD and only transfer the HDDs, as I will use an NVMe for cache in the future. Though I guess I would need to rebuild the array/parity every time after changing a disk.

 

What is the recommended approach here? Thank you very much.

 

Here is a screenshot of the current devices.

You didn't say how big the drives are, or how many you have, but since data-safety is important and shouldn't be moved around too much, assuming your new drives are bigger than 4TB, replace the parity drive with a new one, rebuild parity, then add or replace one of the data disks, move data from the 1.5GB drive to it, and another if possible, so you have one drive less in use, then move them without the now empty drive to the new (faster) system, make a new config, assign the drives and build parity.

Yes you are right, I forgot to mention that. The new parity drive will be 10TB, I have an 8TB drive as well and an older 4TB. I will most likely add another 8 or 10TB drive, though even if I do only add the 8TB and keep the two 4TB currently in the system that would give me a total of 16TB with ample room to grow.

By 'make a new config' you are referring to the 'reset array configuration', right?

 

Is there a special way to move data of one disk or do I need to move it manually from one disk to another?

3 minutes ago, Sono said:

move data of one disk

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/release-notes/7.0.0/#using-mover-to-empty-an-array-disk

2 minutes ago, trurl said:

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/release-notes/7.0.0/#using-mover-to-empty-an-array-disk

Thanks. The system is currently still at 6.9.2, guess it would make sense then to update it first. I was so far putting this off till after the hardware move, but besides the new system being faster there is no reason against it I guess.

6 hours ago, Sono said:

still at 6.9.2.

You can also do it manually using the terminal or connecting through ssh or something, and then entering commands manually or using MC (midnight commander). For example, say you have a new 4TB drive, and 1 and 4 are the smallest it makes sense to replace those. So, replace disk 4, wait for the rebuild, then move the data from /mnt/disk1 to /mnt/disk4, stop the array, move the drives over except disk 1, do a new config, and assign the disks as they are now.

Last question (I think). When I reset the array configuration to make a new config, after moving to the new hardware, will this also reset shares? I've read the documentation, it does not mention that, so I would assume shares are untouched, though is there something to keep an eye on? E.g. if a share is not using all disks, but only certain ones?

User shares are simply the combined top level folders on array and pools.

 

When you create a user share, Unraid creates top level folder(s) named for the share on array and/or pools as needed in accordance with the settings for the share.

 

Conversely, any top level folder on array or pools is automatically a user share named for the folder. Any user share that wasn't created with specific settings has default settings.

 

When reading user shares, all array disks and pools are included (unless specifically excluded from user shares in Global Share Settings). When writing new files to user shares, new files are created in accordance with the settings for the user share.

 

You are right, obviously. I've set this system up so long ago and then also over some time did not use it at all, that I forgot partially how the user shares are actually being stored on the disks. Thanks for clearing that up.