I transitioned to internal boot by using my single nvme cache drive as a boot+data partition and I i thought i would add a second drive for a redundancy since intel optane drives are so cheap. I added the Optane drive just now but neither the Onboarding Wizard or the Internal Boot Wizard in Tools gives me the option to add it.

Am I stuck with just have a single boot drive or is there a way around this?

Thanks

All you have to do with the array stopped is click the disk count dropdown, and set from 1 to 2 and then assign the 2nd disk. Unraid will do its thing and you will have two disks available for use as a boot pool.

8 hours ago, MowMdown said:

All you have to do with the array stopped is click the disk count dropdown, and set from 1 to 2 and then assign the 2nd disk. Unraid will do its thing and you will have two disks available for use as a boot pool.

It looks to me like it's just going to create a cache pool rather than boot?

13 minutes ago, ChutneyBadger said:

It looks to me like it's just going to create a cache pool rather than boot?

The drive is for both parts. Each is a partition, data part and boot part.

3 hours ago, SimonF said:

The drive is for both parts. Each is a partition, data part and boot part.

Thanks. When I tried to add my 16gb Optane drive it said it was too small, it’s only showing as 14.4gb in Unraid.

New device must be the same size or larger than the old one.

29 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

New device must be the same size or larger than the old one.

So I cant use a 16gb Optane drive with a 16gb partition because the partition is from a 500gb drive?

Correct, you can't have only the boot partition mirrored, has to be the whole boot+data.

Edited May 25May 25 by Kilrah

1 hour ago, ChutneyBadger said:

So I cant use a 16gb Optane drive with a 16gb partition because the partition is from a 500gb drive?

Not with a data partition; you can if you erase that first and the boot partition is the same size or smaller than the new device (any data there would be lost)

4 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Not with a data partition; you can if you erase that first and the boot partition is the same size or smaller than the new device (any data there would be lost)

Sorry if i’m being a bit of a noob (i am) but currently i have a 500gb NVME that has a 16gb partition used for boot and the remaining space is used as my cache drive, what would i need to be erasing in order to use my new Optane drive in a boot mirror?

Also, the onboarding wizard said that 16gb is the minimum required size for a boot partition and while my Optane drive is 16gb its only showing as 14.4gb in Unraid despite being brand new so maybe it wont work no matter what?

9 hours ago, ChutneyBadger said:

and the remaining space is used as my cache drive

You would need to erase this.

9 hours ago, ChutneyBadger said:

Also, the onboarding wizard said that 16gb is the minimum required size for a boot partition and while my Optane drive is 16gb its only showing as 14.4gb in Unraid despite being brand new so maybe it wont work no matter what?

8GB is enough for a dedicated boot pool (but you still cannot add a smaller device to an existing one, e.g., if you had a 16GB dedicated boot pool, you could not add an 8GB device; you could the other way around)

2 hours ago, JorgeB said:

You would need to erase this.

8GB is enough for a dedicated boot pool (but you still cannot add a smaller device to an existing one, e.g., if you had a 16GB dedicated boot pool, you could not add an 8GB device; you could the other way around)

Ok, thanks. If i cleared my cache how would i then go about re-doing my internal boot setup? At the moment if i use either the onboarding or internal boot wizards it doesnt give me the option to re-configure it since it has already been configured.

You can do this: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/198440-73xx-version-moving-boot-drive-nvmessd-to-another-drive-nvmessd/#findComment-1619744

3 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

You can do this: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/198440-73xx-version-moving-boot-drive-nvmessd-to-another-drive-nvmessd/#findComment-1619744

Would I need to use the USB tool first and then do what you say in the link you posted?

If you don't have a flash drive with the same release you are running, then yes, first create it with the USB tool, then continue the other steps.

Hey guys, i want to archive basically the same:

I have boot and cache/appdata on 1x 1TB nvme with internal boot.
My MB has one SATA port free and i have an spare 1TB SSD, which i want to add to the (boot cache/appdata) pool for redundancy, sure without data loss.

First, i wanted to replace the nvme with 2x sata SSDs, but because my MB just have 4x SATA ports, i have abadoned this idea, Details are here: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/199489-internal-boot-change-device/#findComment-1635856

So the OP has a smaler drive he wanted to add it's a bit different than my goal.
I have the same size ssd's (nvme & sata each ~1 TB with ~400 GB capacity used).

@JorgeB
Can you please confirm that my plan:

• shutdown

• Add new drive to unraid hardware

• boot

• stop array

• set slots on cache to 2

• add new drive

• start array

Does this work without data loss!?

Thank you

15 minutes ago, pOpYRaid said:

Can you please confirm that my plan:

• shutdown

• Add new drive to unraid hardware

• boot

• stop array

• set slots on cache to 2

• add new drive

• start array

Does this work without data loss!?

That will work as long as the new device isn't smaller.

11 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

That will work as long as the new device isn't smaller.

thx a lot for the fast answer.
I will try it.

@JorgeB
Two followup questions:

1. Size, here are the sizes of the current drives in bytes:
   
   Unraid NVME (boot/cache (with appdata)): 1000204886016
   Spare SATA SSD1 (Crucial): 1000204886016

   Spare SATA SSD2 (Verbatim): 1024209543168
   
   I am tending to the crucial because it's 100% TLC flash.
   As you can see the size is identical and not smaller.
   
   Just to be sure, will this this work with the crucial?
   What happens if i'll add it and it fails regarding size.
   Is my data lost?
   

2. My boot is zfs and cache (where also appdata lives) is xfs.
   Does adding raid mirror on slot 2 work without zfs/btrfs on cache partition?
   
   
   
   Or do i have to convert it (backup, reformat, restore) it to btrfs or zfs for this to work?

   
   

Thanks a lot for your help.
Just dont want to mess up something 😅

27 minutes ago, pOpYRaid said:

is xfs

You cannot add a device to an XFS pool, only btrfs or zfs, so no, in this case it won't let you change slots to 2, you would need to backup and recreate the pool with a multi device filesystem for the data partitions.

Thanks @JorgeB , confirmed exactly that on my system (combined Boot+Data pool, XFS data partition) - Slots dropdown to add a 2nd device just wasn't offered.

Went the backup + recreate route: backed up the cache data via rsync, built a temp USB stick with the same Unraid version, copied over config, booted from it, removed the old pool, ran the onboarding wizard again selecting both devices (NVMe + SATA SSD) with RAID1 for Data+Metadata, then restored the cache data via rsync afterward.

One gotcha worth mentioning for others:
after recreating the pool, "Auto" format picked BTRFS instead of ZFS.
To fix it I had to stop the array first (only then "Remove Pool" became available), explicitly select zfs in the filesystem dropdown on the Main page, start the array again, then format.

All good now, running as a ZFS RAID1 mirror cache.

Thanks for the help!

2 hours ago, pOpYRaid said:

after recreating the pool, "Auto" format picked BTRFS instead of ZFS.

That is the default filesystem for pools. And while I havent tested it, you shouldn't have had to re-create the boot pool entirely, re-formatting the data partition to btrfs or zfs should have allowed you to add a 2nd slot and 2nd drive.

You still would have at least had to have moved all the data from the data partition regardless

Thx for the hint.
Work is done and all is working.
Maybe next time i will try your method.

P.S.: Now to my bigger work... convert array from XFS to ZFS... 😅

1 hour ago, MowMdown said:

you shouldn't have had to re-create the boot pool entirely, re-formatting the data partition to btrfs or zfs should have allowed you to add a 2nd slot and 2nd drive.

Yep, that works.

59 minutes ago, pOpYRaid said:

P.S.: Now to my bigger work... convert array from XFS to ZFS... 😅

I highly recommend you do not convert array disks to zfs filesystem. ZFS in the unraid array will cause really poor read/write performance as ZFS is not intended to be used in single device pools.

If you are going to use ZFS you need to make a proper zfs pool.