I've been running unRaid for 2+ years doing monthly parity checks, and I love it.  But i just happened to think what happens if my usb drive were to fail?  Do i lose my data?  How would i recover from a usb drive failure?

 

I know there aren't moving parts, but everything fails at some point....

 

Running 4.7 if it matters, sorry if this question has been answered before wasn't finding it in the forum search.

 

Thanks,

Chris

 

I've been running unRaid for 2+ years doing monthly parity checks, and I love it.  But i just happened to think what happens if my usb drive were to fail?  Do i lose my data?  How would i recover from a usb drive failure?

 

First, you unRAID server won't work.  But it is not the end of the world.  Limetech has previously replaced licenses for people who have had flash drives fail.  You have to explain the situation and request replacement. 

 

No, You will not lose your data.  How complicated the recovery is depends on more factors than I am prepared to discuss at this time.  But you will never lose your data if your only failure is the flash drive.  (In the absolute worst case situation, you will have recover the data from each drive using a computer that has software installed to read the data disks.)

 

First step to toward recovery is to make a back-up of your flash drive EVERYTIME, you make a change in the configuration of the array including all drive changes and addition of new drives.  If this backbup is current and the only problem is the flash drive, you could be back running within a hour of so of getting a new license.

by backing up the flash drive is that just as simple as copying all the files from it to another location?  I'm probably just being paranoid, but when you have terabytes of data, would be a travesty to lose it.

by backing up the flash drive is that just as simple as copying all the files from it to another location?  I'm probably just being paranoid, but when you have terabytes of data, would be a travesty to lose it.

 

Yep!  unRAID stores everything on that flash drive--except your data.  If you are running other apps, there may be some problems there with things not being quite right (and if you have installed any of those, you should be aware of the settings for those) but your data will be safe. 

Your data is safe regardless of what happens to the flash drive.