Hi,
I have made a big mistake in purchasing the €250 Unraid "unlimited" (which it is not) license a few months ago.
I know, trial license and so, but I didn't try with my 80TB of data and 16 HDD's, I tried small with some data and 2 HDD's, and that seemed to be okay. I decided to take the leap.

Now I am in the situation that I want to go back to Windows - please use another topic to critizise me on that decision, I'll probably read it and think "yeah, that's not my experience..." and go on with the technology I do understand. Unraid is just not my world, I don't understand it, over the last months I have spent hours per day to figure out things, which worked but destroyed something else, I lost many files in the process, and more important: I lost my faith in Unraid. I do not trust it anymore - because it behaves totally different than what is logical to me.

Is there a possibility to sell my Unraid Unlimited license (incl the USB stick if necessary?) to another user who is enthousiastic and interested?

Edited June 7Jun 7 by hermanjb
Corrected spelling mistake

1 hour ago, hermanjb said:

I have made a big mistake in purchasing the €250 Unraid "unlimited" (which it is not) license a few months ago

Just for interest in what way is it limited for your Use Case? You only mention 16 drives which is well within the limits.

4 minutes ago, itimpi said:

Just for interest in what way is it limited for your Use Case? You only mention 16 drives which is well within the limits.

Thanks for your interest! Below I will give a few points that I experienced, and yes: that is probably because I purchased the license assuming it is for the average home user who wants to decide between a NAS or using an old server. I strongly had the impression when I looked at the website and saw the possibilities and features.

It is incredibly slow for basic file operations like moving and copying. It is much more sensitive for "mistakes" a normal user can make, which can result in loss of data. It is way more sensitive with hardware that it can or can not handle (well), it is not stable for me, and I have fear for my data every day. A move operation (from SMR- disks to CMR- disks, because for unraid performance it matters a lot) using mc was interrupted by the websession, and thousands of files are now on two disks, which causes issues I heard (and understand). To solve this issue, which is quite common looking at the forums, I (again) have to get into a terminal, have AI compose a script (because I'm not a developer and have no intention to become one) and keep my fingers crossed that the result will be the right one...

It is all of the last months of having spent hours per day to encounter issues, try to find solutions, for a system which is fundamentally different than what I expected and what I am familiar with, that summarises the reason for me wanting to search for another piece of hardware that runs Windows 11, with storage spaces, and starting the lengthy migration back, away from unraid.

Why didn't you ask for help on the forum?

8 hours ago, hermanjb said:

Unraid "unlimited" (which it is not) license

It is unlimited. You can have 6,830 HDDs on a single unraid system. Your hardware has to support it

6 hours ago, hermanjb said:

Thanks for your interest! Below I will give a few points that I experienced, and yes: that is probably because I purchased the license assuming it is for the average home user who wants to decide between a NAS or using an old server. I strongly had the impression when I looked at the website and saw the possibilities and features.

It is incredibly slow for basic file operations like moving and copying. It is much more sensitive for "mistakes" a normal user can make, which can result in loss of data. It is way more sensitive with hardware that it can or can not handle (well), it is not stable for me, and I have fear for my data every day. A move operation (from SMR- disks to CMR- disks, because for unraid performance it matters a lot) using mc was interrupted by the websession, and thousands of files are now on two disks, which causes issues I heard (and understand). To solve this issue, which is quite common looking at the forums, I (again) have to get into a terminal, have AI compose a script (because I'm not a developer and have no intention to become one) and keep my fingers crossed that the result will be the right one...

It is all of the last months of having spent hours per day to encounter issues, try to find solutions, for a system which is fundamentally different than what I expected and what I am familiar with, that summarises the reason for me wanting to search for another piece of hardware that runs Windows 11, with storage spaces, and starting the lengthy migration back, away from unraid.

All of your issues are basically "user error", you didn't take the time to evaluate the product beyond getting frustrated. I'd personally be more inclined to agree with your complains/concenrs IF you took the full 60 days to properly evaluate unraid but not doing a trial and then complaining about something you have no experience using is not fair.

To answer your question, no, unraid licenses cannot be transferred.

1 hour ago, MowMdown said:

It is unlimited. You can have 6,830 HDDs on a single unraid system. Your hardware has to support it

All of your issues are basically "user error", you didn't take the time to evaluate the product beyond getting frustrated. I'd personally be more inclined to agree with your complains/concenrs IF you took the full 60 days to properly evaluate unraid but not doing a trial and then complaining about something you have no experience using is not fair.

Yes. Thanks. Very helpful.

1 hour ago, MowMdown said:

To answer your question, no, unraid licenses cannot be transferred.

Thanks for your answer.

4 hours ago, trurl said:

Why didn't you ask for help on the forum?

I did once, got bashed that I didn't take time to learn, understand, etc. That seems to be a trend here.

16 minutes ago, hermanjb said:

That seems to be a trend here.

Sorry, but I disagree with this.

Unraid is not a turnkey, take it out of the box and use it toaster. It is a highly configurable OS, an ecosystem which can be used as a basic NAS to a full blown home lab setup. Things which are highly configurable require an understanding of how they work before using. Not doing so is certainly a recipe for painful lessons.

There are quite a number of tutorials, both written and video, readily available on the Internet which explain things from the basic configuration of arrays and pools, setting up Dockers and VMs, to much more complex things people do with Unraid. This support forum is frequented by people who use Unraid and share their knowledge without accolade or compensation. I find these folks to be some of the most helpful, especially compared to other support forums I have visited over many years.

33 minutes ago, hermanjb said:

I did once, got bashed that I didn't take time to learn, understand, etc.

Other than your posts in this thread, I only see one other post you have made on this forum (with this Username). The author of the plugin replied to you the same day.

8 minutes ago, ConnerVT said:

Sorry, but I disagree with this.

Unraid is not a turnkey, take it out of the box and use it toaster. It is a highly configurable OS, an ecosystem which can be used as a basic NAS to a full blown home lab setup. Things which are highly configurable require an understanding of how they work before using. Not doing so is certainly a recipe for painful lessons.

There are quite a number of tutorials, both written and video, readily available on the Internet which explain things from the basic configuration of arrays and pools, setting up Dockers and VMs, to much more complex things people do with Unraid. This support forum is frequented by people who use Unraid and share their knowledge without accolade or compensation. I find these folks to be some of the most helpful, especially compared to other support forums I have visited over many years.

Other than your posts in this thread, I only see one other post you have made on this forum (with this Username). The author of the plugin replied to you the same day.

The other post was on Reddit, not here. The question about being able to change passwords was quickly picked up. True.

I'm not here to argue about 60 or 30 days of trial (website says 30, during which I tried with a few files and 2 HDDs, it worked...), if one has to understand terminal commands and be able to use them all the time, understand that SMR and CMR disks are not really okay to be mixed, that fuse is a very very sensitive file system, that a file moving operation that first copies all files it can, and only then removes them (why??), and all the other unlogical-to-me things unraid had and does, are not something I wish to get into. The website (I made some screenshots) gives me a vastly different impression, one that if you want it to stay easy, you can keep it simple, a plug- and- play experience in which it doesn't matter what disks you have lying around, you can use it, unraid really takes it all. I must have forgotten to read between the lines... man, was I wrong...

My question was if I can sell the license; the answer is no, which means I'll have to take my loss and keep my fingers crossed that I won't loose any important files, save money for a windows machine, and go back to Windows once I have one up and running again.

20 minutes ago, hermanjb said:

if one has to understand terminal commands and be able to use them all the time, understand that SMR and CMR disks are not really okay to be mixed, that fuse is a very very sensitive file system, that a file moving operation that first copies all files it can, and only then removes them (why??), and all the other unlogical-to-me things unraid had and does, are not something I wish to get into. The website (I made some screenshots) gives me a vastly different impression, one that if you want it to stay easy, you can keep it simple, a plug- and- play experience in which it doesn't matter what disks you have lying around, you can use it, unraid really takes it all. I must have forgotten to read between the lines... man, was I wrong...

You actually never have to touch any of the command line, everything one could do with basic storage needs can be done completely via gui.

Fuse is just the layer the array, the "unraid special", uses to combine all single array disks to one "big disk". Fuse does have its quirks but theyre well documented here.

From your earlier comments, i dont know why you were playing around with the array anyway. Since you mentioned windows storage spaces, you should be aware of the performance of the "parity protected" option, it also suffers from the CMR/SMR mix (well SMR as parity device), so you must be using the raid profiles there. The pools would be the options to go there, since youre not limited by single disks speeds or the fuse overhead there. But that contradicts with what you actually want, since you seems too look for mixing disks. So im confused.

And yeah its says 30 days, but you can extend 15 days for 2 times iirc, which should come up to 60 days total.

Edit:

You might have a look, if youre still interested in something linux, into mergerfs with snapraid. Maybe thats something for you. Works kinda the same but not really. I do use it for my backup server.

Edited June 7Jun 7 by Mainfrezzer

I just want to clear some misconceptions up.

18 hours ago, hermanjb said:

The other post was on Reddit, not here.

Reddit are a bunch of bone-heads. Ignore them. Taking advice from reddit is the same as shooting one's self in the foot.

18 hours ago, hermanjb said:

I'm not here to argue about 60 or 30 days of trial (website says 30

Yes 30 days + two 15 day trial extensions. (total of 60 days worth of trial) (first and last bullet points) link

18 hours ago, hermanjb said:

if one has to understand terminal commands and be able to use them all the time

One does not need to know terminal commands to use unraid. You will certainly benefit from knowing but it's not required what so ever.

19 hours ago, hermanjb said:

file moving operation that first copies all files it can, and only then removes them (why??)

Without more context about what you were doing, all I can say is this is not true but is highly dependent on the situation.

Moving files within the disk itself, they are atomic. Instant moves.

Files moving between disks, yes the file will be copied to the target disk first and then removed from the source disk.

19 hours ago, hermanjb said:

understand that SMR and CMR disks are not really okay to be mixed

The only "suggestion" is to not use a SMR disk for a parity drive on unraid, you can, but it will inevitably slow down array write operations.

You will suffer slow speeds mixing these two technologies in any setting. The SMR will always slow you down. Id wager it would be even worse in a RAID type setup.

19 hours ago, hermanjb said:

The website (I made some screenshots) gives me a vastly different impression, one that if you want it to stay easy, you can keep it simple, a plug- and- play experience in which it doesn't matter what disks you have lying around, you can use it, unraid really takes it all

Yeah it pretty much is nearly plug and play. You boot it up, install some HDDs into the array slots, and hit "Start Array". It doesnt get any less complicated.

As with anything, there is a learning curve. Keep in mind your learning something new for the first time, there are going to be bumps along the way.

It's also ok to not like unraid, some people are better off with something like a synology, qnap, ugreen.

Edited June 8Jun 8 by MowMdown

3 hours ago, MowMdown said:

pretty much is nearly plug and play

On 6/7/2026 at 7:47 AM, hermanjb said:

It is way more sensitive with hardware that it can or can not handle (well)

Windows won't even let you install it on most old hardware.