Wobbly tech newb, need some hand holding.

I built my Unraid from a Dell Optiplex 7060 and 4x 2.5" SSD'd in an array.

SSD of 1.9 and 2 TB's
Just learnt this is bad form due to lack of TRIM in an array?

So I need to rebuild into an pool?
But a pool doesn't have a parity drive, so I'll have to put them into a RAIDZ1 with one ssd per VDEV?

Is this the process, broadly speaking?
1. Backup all data to an external drive.
2. Turn array into a RAIDZ1 pool with one SSD per VDEV,
3. Restore from external backup.

If this is correct I'll still have to read the docs on exactly how to do these steps.

Edited February 3Feb 3 by yeffunraid

1. Pools use RAID which will provide some level of parity depending on which FS you choose and which RAID level. As you see, RAIDZ1 provides 1 level of parity protection for the pool of drives per VDEV. Given you have 4 disks you would be wise to opt for a single VDEV of 4 disks wide.

2. Yes SSDs in the unraid array are not idea as TRIM is disabled there. Moving to a pool is the wise choice.

3. Absolutely do not use 1SSD per VDEV, that would be illogical.

4. What I would suggest, now that unraid supports single drive RAIDZ1 expansion is to move as much of your data on to as few disks as possible if you can free up two disks or even 3 disks even better. If you cant this likely wont work without moving data to an external drive.

   You can move the parity disk and the empty data disk and create a RAIDZ1 (not mirror)
   
   With two disks in RAIDZ1, you can copy over data from the 3rd disk, then you can add the 3rd disk and expand the RAIDZ1, once that's done you can copy over the rest of the data and then add the now empty 4th disk and then expand the pool again.
   
   At the end, you will end up with a single VDEV of 4 disks in RAIDZ1 (you will not have 4 individual vdevs of 1 disk each)

Edited February 3Feb 3 by MowMdown

On 2/3/2026 at 2:44 PM, MowMdown said:

4. What I would suggest, now that unraid supports single drive RAIDZ1 expansion is to move as much of your data on to as few disks as possible if you can free up two disks or even 3 disks even better. If you cant this likely wont work without moving data to an external drive.

You can move the parity disk and the empty data disk and create a RAIDZ1 (not mirror)

With two disks in RAIDZ1, you can copy over data from the 3rd disk, then you can add the 3rd disk and expand the RAIDZ1, once that's done you can copy over the rest of the data and then add the now empty 4th disk and then expand the pool again.

At the end, you will end up with a single VDEV of 4 disks in RAIDZ1 (you will not have 4 individual vdevs of 1 disk each)

Thanks MowMdown, I've been thinking about this.

Are these the right steps in the right order?

Shutdown all Containers and VM's.

Use Move to empty cache.
Remove Parity.

Consolidate remaining array to min amount of disks.

Make Pool RAIDZ1 from cleared discs.

Move data into new Pool.
**?Then I'll have to edit the Container and VM paths to the new pool? **

4 hours ago, yeffunraid said:

Thanks MowMdown, I've been thinking about this.

Are these the right steps in the right order?

Shutdown all Containers and VM's.

Use Move to empty cache.
Remove Parity.

Consolidate remaining array to min amount of disks.

Make Pool RAIDZ1 from cleared discs.

Move data into new Pool.
**?Then I'll have to edit the Container and VM paths to the new pool? **

This is going to be a process. My suggestion is to consolidate all data onto as few of your disks as possible. You need to at least have two emtpy disks to make this work I believe.

With the empty disks, make a pool and add them. Set them as zfs filesystem in RAIDZ1 Yours will say "1 vdev of 2 devices" at first.

With that complete. Copy the data from the remaining two array ssds onto the newly created pool. When that is done, you can add the 3rd disk to the pool, once the expansion process is finished you can add the 4th and final ssd to the pool and you will end up with a result like the screenshot where it says "1 vdev of 4 devices" if it goes according to plan.

Edited February 5Feb 5 by MowMdown

I've completely ballsed it up.

I want to completely 100% start again.

How do I transfer the key to a totally new machine?

No disks or data to be kept.

The only thing important is the frigate yaml, which I have a copy of.

Assuming the flash drive is the same, backup the current key, recreate the flash drive, restore the key.