I'm a little bit confused on how to do this so please go easy on me as I'm an unraid novice. I have added a new drive to my unraid array. I have 1 drive that has smart errors and is failing and I want to transfer all data from this drive to the new one. The only problem with swapping out the old drive with the new one is the old drive is still running the old reiserfs filesystem. So if I simply do a drive swap with the new drive parity will restore the new drive with the old filesystem. I want everything to be xfs now. So how do I move everything from my old disk 1 over to the new disk 4 in the array?

I have 4 data drives and then ofcourse the parity drive.

Thanks

If you are on 7.2 you can use the built-in mover empty disk feature:

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/using-unraid-to/manage-storage/file-systems/#converting-to-a-new-file-system-type

8 hours ago, JorgeB said:

If you are on 7.2 you can use the built-in mover empty disk feature:

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/using-unraid-to/manage-storage/file-systems/#converting-to-a-new-file-system-type

I did read this and tried it but apparently mover does not work if you don't have a cache drive which I do not.

37 minutes ago, GrahamW said:

I did read this and tried it but apparently mover does not work if you don't have a cache drive which I do not.

Are you on unraid version 7.2+? If not it doesn't work. Or you can use the unbalance plugin. You can also move everything manually if you want. If you're familiar with midnight commander (mc) in the terminal you can use that. Or use the built-in file manager in the unraid webui.

Yes I am on the latest 7.2 version of unraid. Mover is not available without a cache drive apparently. I'm not very good using command lines so would prefer not to go that route. Was messing around with unbalance trying to figure it out. Not sure how to use the file manager either

If you can't figure out unbalance, Midnight commander in the terminal is not as scary as it sounds. It's a filemanager with a simple gui. I prefer that over the built-in file manager in the webui. Just open the terminal, type mc and hit enter to try it. Navigate to /mnt using the mouse or arrow keys. Then all your disks should be visible. Open the disk you want to move from in the left pane, and the other in the right pane. You shift panes with tab. And on the bottom you can see which keys to press to copy/move etc. You can also use the menu. You can just select all the shares on the disk right away (insert on each share) then F6 to move. It might be other F keys for you. Or just use the menu and the mouse.

The really important thing when moving manually with any method is to only move from disk to disk (you want this) or share to share. Never move from disk to share or vice versa.

Or if you really prefer cut and paste using the windows explorer you can enable disk shares in settings-global share settings (I think, on my phone right now). You then need to go to shares click on each disk and export then to smb, like you have done with your shares. Then you can browse to network in windows explorer and find your server there. Each disk and all your shares should pop right up. Cut and paste from disk to disk.

3 hours ago, GrahamW said:

I did read this and tried it but apparently mover does not work if you don't have a cache drive which I do not.

You don't need a cache pool to use the mover's empty disk feature.

2 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

You don't need a cache pool to use the mover's empty disk feature.

Seems I can't post a screenshot image here but under mover settings it says no cache drive present and gives me no options to use it?

figured out the file manager option in unraid 7.2 and am now copying all files off my one drive to the other. Any tips on removing the bad drive once my transfer completes?

5 minutes ago, GrahamW said:

Any tips on removing the bad drive once my transfer completes?

You need to do a new config, steps here: https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/using-unraid-to/manage-storage/array/removing-disks-from-array/#removing-data-disks

12 hours ago, GrahamW said:

but under mover settings it says no cache drive present and gives me no options to use it?

You should still be able to use the "move now" button on the main page.

13 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

You should still be able to use the "move now" button on the main page.

Looked for it never saw it

I'll test that to confirm; it may be an oversight.

Yep, mover options don't show without a pool, I'll report that to LT.

P.S. for now the mover can still be used to empty a disk by selecting the disk to empty and then starting the mover using the CLI mover start

On 12/27/2025 at 10:11 AM, JorgeB said:

Yep, mover options don't show without a pool

This should be fixed in 7.3.0-beta.1