Is it possible to take a USB drive and plug it into my unRAID for the purposes of data copying.I've got a 3TB external that has movies on it, then I want to put in the RAID. I know I can just copy it from a desktop PC to the raid, but it would just clog up the network for the time it takes the data to transfer. I'd much rather plug the drive into the raid and just do a simple cp to get the data over. Is it possible, and/or are there any special tricks to doing it?

Did you try plug the USB drive and see what pops up on the main page of the unRAID GUI?  (I assume that you are running ver 5 of you have no hope of copying everything off of the 3TB from the unRAID box.)

Not yet, I just got a new 4TB parity drive so I'm running a parity-sync as we speak. When its done, I'll give that a try. Yes I'm running 5.0-rc16c.

As I assume you know, there's no speed advantage to doing that (assuming you have a Gb network).    Nor are you likely to "clog up" your network -- the UnRAID write speed of ~ 30-35MB/s is less than 1/3rd of the data capability of a Gb network; and if this is a USB v2 drive the speed will be even further reduced by the USB data rate.

 

i.e. there's no real disadvantage to simply connecting the drive to a convenient PC and copying the data to UnRAID from there.    The only thing you're really tying up with that approach is the PC you're doing the transfer with -- and even then the PC can certainly be used for other things at the same time ... it just can't be turned off.

 

That's the problem I'm only on a 100Mbit, I know I need new switches, but getting everything into the raid took the budget before then.

That's the problem I'm only on a 100Mbit, I know I need new switches, but getting everything into the raid took the budget before then.

 

Ouch!  That restricts your transfers to ~ 11MB/s (about 1/3rd of what UnRAID is capable of).    I'd buy a single small consumer Gb switch, and plug both the server and the PC you want to use for the transfers into that switch => then at least transfers between those two systems would be at Gb speed [assuming that both systems have Gb adapters => if that's also not the case you definitely need to upgrade some of your infrastructure !! ]

 

The server and all the workstations are gigabit, they're all within 2 years old. I've just been slacking on the switch since I'd need a 8 port and budget is tight. Time to eat ramen for a week

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833166062  $29.99 free shipping.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833166062  $29.99 free shipping.

 

Thanks, I think I can afford that