July 12, 201213 yr Hi guys, This is a 2 part question... Part One I am interested in swapping out my existing Celeron motherboard and CPU, and installing a Core2Quad motherboard and machine. I have 6 hard drives ranging between 1 and 2 TB each (about 10TB of storage). I also have a 500GB cache drive and the necessary parity drive. I am using all the sata ports in the motherboard plus ones on a cheap add-on card. If I were to swap out the motherboards, would I have any problems accessing my shares once upgrade is complete? Can I plug the hard drives into anyof the sata ports; or do I need to somehow match the sata ID numbers to the specific drives between the old and new motherboard? Can I also plug in my current unRAID thumbdrive and have it work without any concerns? I am on version 4.7. Needless to say, my data is precious and it is not backed up anywhere... Part Two If that works... I would like to upgrade to version 5. But this part is also VERY scary to me. What I would like to do is get a new thumbdrive of the same size. Clone it using dd in a unix machine, purchase a new license for unRAID Pro and replace the authorization file... And boot.... If that works, I assume there is a method to go from 4.5 to the latest 5..... If it does not work in either case, I can still go to back to my original thumbdrive and live with 4.7. Is this method advisable just as a safe way to upgrade my system? My unRAID is storing all my media, family photos my work (that is backed up), it is running MySQL, Sab, Sickbeard, Couch Poatato, Headphones, Maraschino. I do not want to have to re-configure all that again. I am hoping to add Plex server support after both upgrades. Guys I would really appreciate some guidance on this... It is all working beautifully now, but I do not want to stay behind... so I need to move forward but with extreme caution. Please note that I am not quite a newbie, but I am definitely not a super pro... I have gotten to where I am with a lot of perseverance... and it's been a while since I did it... thus I could not retrace my steps without practically re-learning all over again. Many thanks, Hernando
July 13, 201213 yr Take a screen print of your current configuration (web GUI). That should have everything you need to assign the drives on your new motherboard. Don't try to upgrade the hardware and software at the same time. Other than that, your data should be safe. I wouldn't bother about changing the USB drive. It should just plug and play. When you want to upgrade to 5.0, just make a backup of the current files on your thumb drive (always a good idea to have on hand in any case). Then you can just wipe most of the files off so that you start with a "clean" install, and then start installing packages and plug-ins.
July 13, 201213 yr Author Take a screen print of your current configuration (web GUI). That should have everything you need to assign the drives on your new motherboard. Don't try to upgrade the hardware and software at the same time. Other than that, your data should be safe. I wouldn't bother about changing the USB drive. It should just plug and play. When you want to upgrade to 5.0, just make a backup of the current files on your thumb drive (always a good idea to have on hand in any case). Then you can just wipe most of the files off so that you start with a "clean" install, and then start installing packages and plug-ins. Hi Kenoka, Thanks for your feedback... I am not sure I follow your comment about the screenshot... I see something like: Parity: Hitachi - serialnumber1 Disk1: Hitachi - serialnumber2 Disk2: Samsung serialnumber3 etc. If I plug the same drives to the new motherboard, will they be automatically recognized, or will I need to tell unRAID which is disk1 and so on based on the serial numbers. My goal in upgrading to 5.0 is to NOT have to do a clean install.... It would take me a month+ just to get where I am today. I have kept up with the package updates and so on. Is there a simple upgrade method to go from 4.7 to the latest 5? Thanks again, Hernando
July 13, 201213 yr Read This: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Server_Version_5.0-beta_Release_Notes
July 13, 201213 yr Author Read This: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Server_Version_5.0-beta_Release_Notes Thank you Frank. This is perfect.... Much appreciated guys.
July 13, 201213 yr One note, I would upgrade to 5 first and then upgrade the hardware. Version 5 will properly remember disk assignments based on serial numbers. I've charged CPUs/motherboards three times while running 5 with no issues.
July 13, 201213 yr If you are upgrading to 5 plus hardware migration... I would upgrade to 5 first. it not only makes the drive migration easier, this also adds a blanket to your build/migration just in case the new hardware is not supported by 4.7. I would do a parity check with no correct to make sure that your existing server is trouble free and data is all valid. upgrade to 5. run another parity check with no correct if you have the time. migrate hardware, Memtest. parity check with no correct to make sure the new system can calculate parity correctly.
July 15, 201213 yr Author Thank you Johnm... I missed your post and I did the 5 upgrade... But so far so good... However, I know if need to add the cache drive again... I have my swapfile, Sab, SB, and CP all in there... How do I create a cache drive in 5? It was self evident in 4.7 but not here... EDIT: I think I get it... I have to stop the array, and then add the cache drive... but when I try to stop the array, the web interface stops working... thus I cannot add the cache drive...
July 15, 201213 yr Thank you Johnm... I missed your post and I did the 5 upgrade... But so far so good... However, I know if need to add the cache drive again... I have my swapfile, Sab, SB, and CP all in there... How do I create a cache drive in 5? It was self evident in 4.7 but not here... EDIT: I think I get it... I have to stop the array, and then add the cache drive... but when I try to stop the array, the web interface stops working... thus I cannot add the cache drive... Strictly a gut feeling but I would bet that your array is not stopping because there is some process or external activity which is causing disk IO that prevents the array from stopping.
July 16, 201213 yr Author After struggling and mostly panicking enabling and disabling cache... I went back to 4.7... I may try again tonight and see if the stars align in the sky... I think the solar storms gave me a streak of bad luck.. EDIT I have some questions about 5... I know the information is out there, but I am sure it is all buried in lots of places. 1) Is unMEnu still essential as it is in 4.7? I currently use MySQL, APcupsd, lighttpd, PHP, screen, unRAID Swapfile, unRaid-Web, unRAR. 2) I see applications that are called plugins... are these different from the unMenu packages and what is the procedure for downloading/installing them? This link does a good job of explaining the install process: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=14760.0 or http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=21065.0 3) Are 3 and 4 TB hard drives supported in 5? Thank you guys. Hernando
July 17, 201213 yr Unmenu is not essential as there are plugins for 5 for most if not all of those unmenu packages. I still have unmenu running but rarely use it any more. Yes, you have to use version 5 for 3 and 4 TB support. As for why you couldn't stop the array when running version 5, its likely something was accessing a disk. Try disabling all your unmenu packages and then stopping the array.
July 17, 201213 yr 3 and 4 TB drives are only supported by V5 (after beta8) I still use unmenu for almost everything with 5. that is mostly because i had everything setup before the plug-in system was released and ther are not plug-in's for many of the add-ons i use. I'll probably stick with unMenu until there is a standard plug-in system, including a repository and a uniformed instal/uninstall process.
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