Dear Unraid community/support

Hope this is the right forum if not maybe the mods could move it to te correct one.

Current Scenario: I have 2 Unraid servers.

A newer one with 11x 8TB (9 data, 2 parity)

An older one with 8x 8TB (6 data, 2 parity)

And i have an old spare server.

I now want to switch to 7x 24TB hard drives (2 parity, 5 data) and migrate both servers into one running Unraid server on the newer hardware.

I know that 5x 24TB for data is smaller than 15x 8TB but theres lots of free space and when i move the files on the discs together in the new build there would be 4TB of Free space left.

Whats the best way to do this?

I could replace and rebuild parity and then start rebuilding the data discs and move data to the free space of the 24TB discs. when all data is there i could remove the rest of the 8TB drives and then rewrite parity.

But in this scenario i have an unprotected array for the time when parity is rewritten.

Is there a better way out there where i could keep parity intact?

Also had the idea to take the spare server (also older hardware) and build up a new unraid server with the new disks. Move all the Data onto it and then move the disks and unraid configuration in the Server with newer hardware.

I think that this would be my favorite option since i don't have to work with an unprotected array. (allthough there is an offsite backup off everything, but the transfer speed isn't that fast so it would take weeks to restore data over the internet if an uprotected disc fails)

But i only have two unraid licenses that are currently in use by the older and newer server.

Would the free license cover this migration process with the spare server?

And how to do this? simply offline copy the disc.cfg from spare server over to the licensed stick, and then replace all discs with the "new Array" and then start up?

I want to preserve all plugins, docker, etc. withhin the newer server.

What do you think is the best way?

Is there a another way i missed?

Hope it's something clear what i want to do.

If you have any questions, don't bother to ask.

Br

Edited November 5, 2025Nov 5 by leech

47 minutes ago, leech said:

Also had the idea to take the spare server (also older hardware) and build up a new unraid server with the new disks. Move all the Data onto it and then move the disks and unraid configuration in the Server with newer hardware.

This would be my choice, safer and less prone to mistakes.

4 hours ago, JorgeB said:

This would be my choice, safer and less prone to mistakes.

Is there some kind of documentation on how to transfer disk configuration to another flash drive?

Since i want to preserve everything else (shares, network, docker, etc.) but the disk configuration. When switching the disks from the spare server to the Server with the best Hardware.

i thought it was as simple as copying disk.cfg but when i look into disk.cfg i only se general parameters but not what disk is attached to what slot.

super.dat has the assignments, but it's not a txt file, you can only copy the assignments as they are, not edit or change them, so in this case I would just reassign the disks.

4 hours ago, JorgeB said:

super.dat has the assignments, but it's not a txt file, you can only copy the assignments as they are, not edit or change them, so in this case I would just reassign the disks.

For confirmation
So i just hit new config, assign the disks like in the spare server and hit parity is valid and start up the array?

Yep

Will new config also effect docker/plugins/application settings? or will this be preserved?

It doesn't say anything about it in the Tool Description.

It won't change any of those settings.

Migration took some time but is finally complete.
Everything worked like described!