Hello, today I decide to say Goodbye and good riddance to Windows Server+DrivePool and I built another system from spare parts just for Unraid 7.2.2. My old SERVER is still in service and running in my other room, but I took two of my 5 drives out already to at least start an Unraid server. So here is what I have. Three HGST Enterprise class 8TB He8 drives. One IronWolf Pro 8TB NAS drive, one IronWolf 4TB NAS drive, one Corsair MP600 NVMe cache drive and one 1TB Samsung SATA drive. One of the HGST drives I will be used for Parity, although I cant figure out how to do that. I also have a 500GB Corsair MP600 NVMe SSD that I have already setup as cache. I also have a unused 1TB 870 EVO+ that I would like to use as backup cache, or what ever it should be used for. I already formatted the MP600 cache ssd as XFS as well. So now I have installed my first two 8TB drives, one HGST and one IronWolf Pro. I want the HGST as Parity since its failure rate is much lower than the IronWolf Pro. The IronWolf Pro will be hdd data but I have not figured out how to do that yet. This should get me in a state to start migrating data, correct? On my Windows Server I currently have two 8TB HGST He8 drives also and they only have about 5.5TB of data on them, so this 8TB setup in Unraid should work to start the migration I believe. Once all of my 5.5TB of data has copied over from the windows server I will want to remove those two last HGST drives from the windows server and add them to the Unraid server. This is my current plan.

My Server is modest

Intel Haswell current setup

I7-4790 (old I know but still has Intel Quick Sync Video for my Plex Media Server)

16GB of DDR3 RAM

500GB MP600 NVMe installed in the GPU's PCIe x16 slot (cache)

1 x HGST He8 8TB (Parity)

1 x IronWold Pro 8TB (data)

Later on I will add

1TB 870 EVO+ (backup cache or something useful?)

2 x HGST He8 8TB (data)

1 x 4TB IronWolf (non-pro slowest drive data)

This should give me like 20TB or 24TB data space eventually, right? But I cant get past where I am at right now. The Parity option seems to be missing from where I read that it is supposed to be. So, is there a newbie guide somewhere online or in pdf, or a Unraid expert that can help a newbie get started? Maybe even a YT video perhaps? Where do newbies start exactly? I only know Windows stuff and have been a Windows user since 1994, so this is completely and utterly different to me, but I must learn this Unraid because I want this setup really really bad. Lol

Thanks for any guidance at all. I am on Trial day #1. And I am happy to be here. Thanks again, Rod

Edited December 9, 2025Dec 9 by SkOrPn
added a single word

When you stop the array you’ll see a list of disks (parity, disk 1, disk 2, etc) each is a pull-down menu that will list all unassigned drives. You can select a drive to assign to that spot. When you re-start the array the system will clear the drive (write zeros to all sectors) if it’s not already and format it. This will erase all data on the drive. If you’re assigning a parity drive the system will also start calculating parity to it. I would recommend not assigning a parity drive until you have complete transferring your data though. Maintaining parity will slow the data transfer since it requires writing the new data to the array and the parity drive.

Most Unraid procedures can be found with a google search and there are many videos on YouTube. Feel free to ask questions if your not sure though.

This might be of help- Unraid Docs

Also, depending on the amount of data you will be transferring to the new machine, you may not want to assign a cache drive until the transfer is complete. Large transfers (TB’s) could overwhelm a 500GB drive and the transfer will probably fail. Transfer speeds might be slightly slower without the cache drive but a lot fewer headaches and you won’t be waiting for mover to empty the cache so you can resume transferring.

11 minutes ago, wgstarks said:

not assigning a parity drive until you have complete transferring your data

Also, don't cache initial data load. If you intend to transfer more data at once than cache can hold, don't cache.

Lots of videos here:

https://youtube.com/@spaceinvaderone

OK I'm back and thanks for the replies my friends. It's good to see a community that doesn't balk at new folks trying to learn something new. I did put in some time and effort trying to find resources I could read up on but I eventually gave up and decided to ask here, because that is what a community forum is usually for. So, I just couldn't find this "dropdown" I kept reading about, and all resources say to use the dropdown directly under the Array Devices, or that the "Array Devices" is actually a dropdown menu itself, but it is NOT. However, I think I found it now, it is actually under the section "Pool Devices" and sitting directly under the word "Identification". I just needed some sleep I guess, lol. So that's where I find the options for Parity etc? OK got it. But now I actually need to Remove my cache device before the data migration? Hmm, oh boy, OK. That is funny because I read to assign that as cache before anything else, just wow. So how do I do that? Do I remove it physically from the machine or just remove it from the Pool?

Also, about the Parity drive, do I add both 8TB drives to the Pool as data, and then later on convert the HGST as Parity, or do I simply add the IronWolf Pro as data and just transfer data to it first and THEN set the HGST as Parity after all data has been moved over? Also any idea on what file format to use on the HDD and Parity drives? Should that be BTRFS and will my 4790 handle that OK resources wise? Thanks to everyone that responds with their helpful insight. In the meantime I will be reading more docs and watching more videos on Unraid 7. Thanks again

Parity is in the array, not in a pool.

Do you intend to have an array?

Attach Diagnostics ZIP to your NEXT post in this thread.

29 minutes ago, trurl said:

Parity is in the array, not in a pool.

Do you intend to have an array?

Yeah I created the Array using just one 8TB data drive as was previously suggested. The other two drives are still unassigned because of the large data transfer that is taking place right now. I created "some" of the shares already, at least the ones that will have large data transfers and that data is already copying over from the Windows SERVER. Once that is done I will have to test things before I shut down the Windows server for good, but everything must work as expected before I feel gutsy enough to take that final step. Once I am confident that its working how I want and like, then I will start moving more data HDD's into the Unraid NAS and then setup the Parity and Cache drives. But I do have two more questions, the appdata and media folders that Unraid docs made me create had to be created on the data Array since their is no cache drive in use yet. Will that be easy to move back to the NVMe SSD (cache) once all data is done copying over? And when should I setup the Parity drive? After the cache drive is also setup, or after I add the final three data HDDs and place them all in a Pool? Man there is lots to learn here, lol. I just hope I am not making big mistakes that I can not fix.

unraid-server-diagnostics-20251209-1631.zip

46 minutes ago, SkOrPn said:

the appdata and media folders that Unraid docs made me create had to be created on the data Array since their is no cache drive in use yet. Will that be easy to move back to the NVMe SSD (cache) once all data is done copying over?

Any shares that you want on the cache can be moved by setting the configuration so that cache is the primary storage and then running mover to move the shares.

48 minutes ago, SkOrPn said:

And when should I setup the Parity drive?

When the initial data transfer is complete.

Are you using pools or is it the array?

1 minute ago, wgstarks said:

Any shares that you want on the cache can be moved by setting the configuration so that cache is the primary storage and then running mover to move the shares.

When the initial data transfer is complete.

Are you using pools or is it the array?

Am I using Pools or the Array?? I don't understand that question. Don't I have to use a Pool eventually? I mean how am I going to have a large data Pool of 5 HDD's if I don't create a Pool eventually? And isn't the Pool also the same as the Array? In DrivePool my HDD's were just one big Pool of four 8TB drives and one 4TB drive. So I apologize, but I don't understand what you mean by Pool or Array?

This is what I want.

1 x 8TB HGST Parity drive (I will be getting another drive for this eventually for Parity 2)

2 x 8TB HGST data drives (in one large pool)

1 x 8TB IronWolf Pro data drive (in the same large pool)

1 x 4TB IronWolf data drive (in the same large pool)

1 x 500GB NVMe SSD (Primary cache)

1 x 1TB SATA SSD (Secondary cache??? I don't know about this yet)

30 years worth of my data collecting, tons of family photos, documents, IT documents, work documents, school stuff, etc stored in the Pool in its own directory called STORAGE and in the same large Pool as everything else, plus I want to migrate all of my 15 years worth of Plex movies, shows and music etc, and all of the metadata so that nothing changes from how it was working on the Windows SERVER. I just want ALL of it to be in one Drive location on the network for all computers on the local network to easily access. By the way my network is all 2.5GbE if that matters at all. I have 7 computers on the local net and a multitude of Plex enabled TV's and devices such as smart phones in almost every room in this House, which all have to have access to this Unraid NAS I am building here. I am under the impression that Unraid is perfect for this NAS SERVING. I just want to get away from the dangers of Windows, lol. I used to think Windows was the best OS, but now I just see it as a PC gaming OS and even that seems to be changing.

So can you answer this question for me please? Is Unraid for me and my family?

Unraid originally offered a parity protected array (a bunch of drives with parity protection). In the past couple of years it has also incorporated the ability to use zfs pools. You should see sections for both of these on the main tab.

I believe either of these will work for you but you can see that I don’t use pools at all so I’m probably not the best source of info for that. A quick google search turned up this article.

33 minutes ago, SkOrPn said:

So can you answer this question for me please? Is Unraid for me and my family

Absolutely. And IMO an array is easier to work with but that’s just an opinion from someone who knows almost nothing about zfs.😁

So the way you do it all drives are independently accessed, so many drives would have to be network mapped on each Linux or Windows PC? I just want ONE mapped drive (a Pool of drives) to present to me everything I have ever saved or created, and I want it Parity protected. Because I know someday something will happen and on Windows+DrivePool if you lose a drive you lose that data that was on it, unless you had your drives mirrored and that uses up more of the space you purchased. I like the idea of only one or two Parity drives protecting everything. That is not too much to ask.

EDIT: I too know nothing about zfs

Edited December 10, 2025Dec 10 by SkOrPn

Drives in the array are a special kind of "pool". Here we just refer to those as the array to distinguish them from the other pools you can create.

Typically, the array will have HDDs for large storage and each pool outside the array will have one or more SSD/nvme drives for fast storage.

The array disks are independent filesystems protected by 1 or 2 parity drives.

User shares allow folders to span array disks and pools.

The documentation explains these things pretty well.

Normally, you don't create appdata, it gets created when you enable docker. I don't recommend enabling docker or VMs until after data transfer is complete, parity built, and pool(s) created for appdata and related shares to live on.

Just now, SkOrPn said:

So the way you do it all drives are independently accessed, so many drives would have to be network mapped on each Linux or Windows PC? I just want ONE mapped drive (a Pool of drives) to present to me everything I have ever saved or created, and I want it Parity protected. Because I know someday something will happen and on Windows+DrivePool if you lose a drive you lose that data that was on it, unless you had your drives mirrored and that uses up more of the space you purchased. I like the idea of only one or two Parity drives protecting everything. That is not too much to ask.

No. The SMB network will see your shares (STORAGE, Movies, whatever you choose to name them). You can share the individual disks but it’s not recommended. Normally the only place you’ll see the disks is in the Unraid webUI and data will be spread across all disks in the array if you’re using the default settings so that you’ll wind up with a single apparent mapped location that equals the total of all the drives.

Edit: single location for each share that is.

Edited December 10, 2025Dec 10 by wgstarks

28 minutes ago, wgstarks said:

you can see that I don’t use pools at all

Your screenshot shows that you have one single drive pool named cache

@trurl Yes I installed both docker and the plex addon, but I have not enabled docker yet? So that was correct? I wont do that research until all of the data is moved. Once all of the data is on the Unraid-server I will go back into DrivePool and ask it to remove one of my HGST drives. This will let me shut down the Unraid-server and install one more 8TB drive, that way I can create the Pool finally, I think? Also I have a 4TB nas drive that will be used in the pool but it is filled to the brim with data that I want to go through first. Not yet sure how to transfer that data yet, but it is currently sitting in a USB Docking station on my main Rig and will be the very last thing I add to the Unraid-server.

Just now, trurl said:

Your screenshot shows that you have one single drive pool named cache

Yeah, used to use a 2 drive cache pool. Just a single drive there now. Never changed it back. No zfs pools though.

Just now, SkOrPn said:

I installed both docker and the plex addon, but I have not enabled docker yet?

In Settings - Docker, you enable the Docker service. If by "plex addon" you mean you installed one of the several plex containers available in Community Apps, then you have indeed enabled Docker since CA won't allow you to install any container unless Docker is enabled.

But according to your earlier diagnostics, Docker had not been enabled yet. If you haven't installed any containers yet, you should be able to delete your appdata share since it should be empty. Better to let Docker create that and related shares after you have a pool of fast storage for those to live on.

13 minutes ago, SkOrPn said:

how to transfer that data yet, but it is currently sitting in a USB Docking station

Unassigned Devices plugin will let you plug that into your server and transfer that data.

10 minutes ago, wgstarks said:

No. The SMB network will see your shares (STORAGE, Movies, whatever you choose to name them). You can share the individual disks but it’s not recommended. Normally the only place you’ll see the disks is in the Unraid webUI and data will be spread across all disks in the array if you’re using the default settings so that you’ll wind up with a single apparent mapped location that equals the total of all the drives.

I have ALWAYS called that a Pool of drives though. Which is a Pooling of physical drives into a single drive letter on Windows. In Windows DrivePool software each drive is given a letter that you can select yourself. I chose to use the end of the alphabet all those years ago, so I had 5 drives S, T, X, Y and Z. But after they are Pooled together I gave that Pool the drive letter of A: since in windows nothing can accidentally change the drive letter of A or B, they can never become a different drive letter. So all these drives are Pooled together into one Drive letter that I appropriately named DrivePool (A:). It is this single Drive letter that we can access all over the house if needed, both from Linux and Windows depending on the machine I happen to be using. DrivePool (A:) also has all of my Plex media stored within it, but the Plex metadata is of course on a main Windows OS SSD. I will have a bottle of Tylenol ready because I am so nervous that I wont be able to figure out how to properly migrate all of my data and Plex data over safely without me making a huge mistake. This is why I will not shutdown the windows server until all is fine, lol.

2 minutes ago, trurl said:

Unassigned Devices plugin will let you plug that into your server and transfer that data.

Will that be faster than going through the local net perhaps?

10 minutes ago, SkOrPn said:

Will that be faster than going through the local net perhaps?

yes

11 minutes ago, SkOrPn said:

I have ALWAYS called that a Pool of drives though

All assigned drives are combined (what you are thinking of as pooled). Large HDDs in the array, and fast storage in pools outside the array.

Folders can span drives. The combined top level folders on all assigned disks constitute the user shares. It is these user shares that are accessed across the network. Your diagnostics showed that you had already created some user shares.

When you create a user share in the webUI, top level folders named for the share are created on array and pools as needed in accordance with settings for that share.

Conversely, if you create a top level folder on assigned drives, it is automatically part of a user share named for the folder. Any user share you have not made settings for get default settings.

Each user share has settings that control how it uses storage, and controls network access to the share.

33 minutes ago, trurl said:

In Settings - Docker, you enable the Docker service. If by "plex addon" you mean you installed one of the several plex containers available in Community Apps, then you have indeed enabled Docker since CA won't allow you to install any container unless Docker is enabled.

But according to your earlier diagnostics, Docker had not been enabled yet. If you haven't installed any containers yet, you should be able to delete your appdata share since it should be empty. Better to let Docker create that and related shares after you have a pool of fast storage for those to live on.

Yes, originally I was following the instructions of ChatGPT and it had me to setup docker and download plex. I also was watching a few videos on the subject and the same instructions were given. I did that, but I since have disabled docker after realizing that the first thing for me to do was to get the data on the Unraid-server as soon as possible. By the way, dont use AI for help with these things, it is so incredibly dumb and just doesn't listen to you, and in the end your time is just wasted, lol. Live and learn.