Hi,

 

I'm in process of moving from 4x2TB and 2x1TB hdd to unraid. I just bought and finished precleared 2x 3TB drives which took about 32hours. I already set 1 of 3TB as an array and moved data from 1TB drives into it.

 

the question is, Can I;

 

- format that another 3TB drives to reiserfs using unmenu and mount it outside array OR set it as array,

- move another 5TB data into both of drive (2x3TB),

- preclear all the drives which their data has been move to that 2x3TB drives,

- after completing preclear, move back data from 1 of those 3TB drives..and convert it into parity drive?

 

which at the end, I will get

 

1x3TB

4x2TB

2x1TB

 

of data and

 

1x3TB parity?

 

 

I'm planning to use my 60GB ssd as cache drive later.

 

 

 

thanks!

Yes, you can do what you are asking. Your easiest is just to mount both 3TB drives into your array and copy the data across (you don't need to try and leave it outside of your array).

 

It will be a bit tedious doing everything you list, and obviously you are running without protection (parity) until the end, but otherwise you will be fine. Just keep in mind you will need to purchase an UnRAID Pro key to do all this as you will have 8 total drives:

 

?Basic (free) - Great for those who want to try unRAID, Basic supports up to 3 devices (1 Parity, 2 Data).

?Plus - Ideal for medium-sized Media Servers, Plus supports up to 7 devices (1 Parity, 5 Data, 1 Cache).

?Pro - Supporting up to 25 devices (1 Parity, 23 Data, and 1 Cache), go Pro to build a truly massive Media Data Server.

 

 

thanks bkastner!

 

do I need to re-preclear that drives before convert it into parity?

 

 

(i  got pro license yesterday )

 

 

btw, may I ask you..whats the reason you're using 1TB instead of getting smaller drive for cache?

Moving a bunch of data around to try and minimize the drives you need to buy will, as already noted, work okay -- but this implies two things:  (a)  You don't have backups of your data; and (b) you're going to run "at risk" until you get everything restructured.

 

Also, since you're starting "from scratch" with UnRAID, I'd buy a 4TB drive for parity ... there's no reason to limit yourself to smaller data drives.    If you had a 4TB data drive, you could simply do this:

 

(a)  Create the initial array with the 4TB parity and your 2 3TB drives.   

(b)  Copy all the data from 3 of your 2TB drives to the new array.  Note this data will be parity protected, since you'll already have parity on the array.

(3)  Now add those 3 2TB drives to your array [Either pre-clear them, or just let UnRAID clear them]

(4)  Copy the rest of your data to the array.

 

 

 

 

btw, may I ask you..whats the reason you're using 1TB instead of getting smaller drive for cache?

 

At today's drive prices, I can't imagine why anyone would bother buying a drive < 1TB

... in addition, many folks like to keep application data files on their cache drive, or even use the cache as effectively a "hot spare" (which they can reassign as a data drive if a drive fails) -- in which case they'll have a 3 or 4TB cache drive.

 

thanks bkastner!

 

do I need to re-preclear that drives before convert it into parity?

 

 

(i  got pro license yesterday )

 

 

btw, may I ask you..whats the reason you're using 1TB instead of getting smaller drive for cache?

 

No, you don't need to re-clear the drive for parity. The parity process will re-write the entire drive anyways, and you've already confirmed the drive has no issues with the first preclear.

 

As for my cache drive, there are a couple of reasons. First, when I move movies over I typically do them in blocks (I don't use CouchPotato - I manually download movies and update them with MVKmerge to make sure English is first/only language and update subtitle settings, etc on a pc before moving over). When I do this I can move 200-400GB of movies at a time.

 

The other reason is I am using the cache drive for virtual machines. I am using UnRAID 6.0 and have SAB/Sickbeard/Plex running in a VM, and have a large data drive in the VM (200GB) to allow Sickbeard to work and for the Plex library). Depending on what I am doing I've had my cache drive fill up 75% or so before the mover process kicks in to migrate data from the cache drive to the array.

 

Moving a bunch of data around to try and minimize the drives you need to buy will, as already noted, work okay -- but this implies two things:  (a)  You don't have backups of your data; and (b) you're going to run "at risk" until you get everything restructured.

 

Also, since you're starting "from scratch" with UnRAID, I'd buy a 4TB drive for parity ... there's no reason to limit yourself to smaller data drives.    If you had a 4TB data drive, you could simply do this:

 

(a)  Create the initial array with the 4TB parity and your 2 3TB drives.   

(b)  Copy all the data from 3 of your 2TB drives to the new array.  Note this data will be parity protected, since you'll already have parity on the array.

(3)  Now add those 3 2TB drives to your array [Either pre-clear them, or just let UnRAID clear them]

(4)  Copy the rest of your data to the array.

 

 

 

 

btw, may I ask you..whats the reason you're using 1TB instead of getting smaller drive for cache?

 

At today's drive prices, I can't imagine why anyone would bother buying a drive < 1TB

... in addition, many folks like to keep application data files on their cache drive, or even use the cache as effectively a "hot spare" (which they can reassign as a data drive if a drive fails) -- in which case they'll have a 3 or 4TB cache drive.

 

The only amendment I would make to Gary's suggestion is I would hold off on adding the parity drive until you've moved over your data. Without parity you can usually copy at 90-100MB/s, but once you add parity it will be updating parity as each file is copied over. This can drop you to 15-30MB/sec for copying. When I am building an UnRAID server for family/friends I usually add the parity drive once all data is copied over and then do a parity check after the parity build has been completed.

The only amendment I would make to Gary's suggestion is I would hold off on adding the parity drive until you've moved over your data. Without parity you can usually copy at 90-100MB/s, but once you add parity it will be updating parity as each file is copied over. This can drop you to 15-30MB/sec for copying. When I am building an UnRAID server for family/friends I usually add the parity drive once all data is copied over and then do a parity check after the parity build has been completed.

While true.  Doing this means your data is unprotected until you are finished moving and have built and checked parity.  Some don't want to go even that long without protection.  I don't have a problem going this route.  I have myself but it is something to think about.

The only amendment I would make to Gary's suggestion is I would hold off on adding the parity drive until you've moved over your data. Without parity you can usually copy at 90-100MB/s, but once you add parity it will be updating parity as each file is copied over. This can drop you to 15-30MB/sec for copying. When I am building an UnRAID server for family/friends I usually add the parity drive once all data is copied over and then do a parity check after the parity build has been completed.

While true.  Doing this means your data is unprotected until you are finished moving and have built and checked parity.  Some don't want to go even that long without protection.  I don't have a problem going this route.  I have myself but it is something to think about.

 

Very true, but I thought it was worth noting the difference in performance when moving to UnRAID. for 10TB of data it could have a large impact on the overall time needed to move everything to UnRAID.

I also copy the data before adding the parity drive ... but I'll add two caveats:

 

(1)  I ALWAYS copy data to the server with verification (I use TeraCopy set to verify the copies)

 

and

 

(2)  If you're going to cannibalize the original data drives to add them to the server, and don't have backups of the data on those drive (you SHOULD of course), then I'd add parity before you wipe those drives.    e.g. in this case, if you followed my suggestion, you would copy the first 3 2TB drives to the array before adding the 4TB parity drive;  THEN add parity & let the parity sync complete; then do a parity check to confirm all was well;  and finally add the 3 2TB drives to the array and complete the copies from the other drives.

 

... incidentally, if you don't have backups of your data, then I'd just buy 2 4TB drives =>one for parity, one for data.    Then your array would have 2 3TB drive and a 4TB drive for data ... enough for all of your current data.    Then you could just keep your existing 2TB & 1TB drives as backups.

 

Remember, UnRAID (or any other RAID), is NOT a backup 

thanks all, really great help.

 

garycase : well, I just bought 2x3TB and max up 10 sata port on my motherboard. I also already ordered AOC-SASLP-MV8 but my supplier said it will took around 3-4 weeks. So, buying another drive is not an option.

 

I'm using unraid on my esxi box. Before this, I'm using unraid plus since 2011 but changed to flexraid when my unraid box was stolen years later. I decided to return to unraid because I like this community.. (I dont like brahim's attitude )

 

as for backup, I dont have any important data on all of this drives.. all of my important one is on my laptop, backup using crashplan. All of this drives only contains media files which I can re-download (but I just dont want to waste time to do so.. )

 

my other 2 drives are 2xSSD (60GB and 120GB) which I used as datastore for esxi. I'm thinking to change that 60GB drive for unraid cache, which I hope enough (my sickbeard/couchpotato/torrent VM usually downloading 20-30GB per day).

 

 

right now I'm using Teracopy to copy my data from windows's VM to my unraid VM (Silencio) because I didnt notice much different in speed when copying using midnight commander on unraid (yes, I passthrough'ed these drives to unraid, mount using unmenu) without parity.

 

 

again, Thanks all for your great advice. This is the only reason I'm back to unraid after moved to different raid software (I already tried flexraid,freenas,openmediavault (which is great but buggy)).

 

 

(2)  If you're going to cannibalize the original data drives to add them to the server, and don't have backups of the data on those drive (you SHOULD of course), then I'd add parity before you wipe those drives.    e.g. in this case, if you followed my suggestion, you would copy the first 3 2TB drives to the array before adding the 4TB parity drive;  THEN add parity & let the parity sync complete; then do a parity check to confirm all was well;  and finally add the 3 2TB drives to the array and complete the copies from the other drives.

 

Wow..I never thought of this..thanks bro!

 

As for my cache drive, there are a couple of reasons. First, when I move movies over I typically do them in blocks (I don't use CouchPotato - I manually download movies and update them with MVKmerge to make sure English is first/only language and update subtitle settings, etc on a pc before moving over). When I do this I can move 200-400GB of movies at a time.

 

The other reason is I am using the cache drive for virtual machines. I am using UnRAID 6.0 and have SAB/Sickbeard/Plex running in a VM, and have a large data drive in the VM (200GB) to allow Sickbeard to work and for the Plex library). Depending on what I am doing I've had my cache drive fill up 75% or so before the mover process kicks in to migrate data from the cache drive to the array.

 

is there any advantage using unraid 6's xen for sb/plex/etc instead of running unraid as vm itself in esxi/xen/etc and running seperate vm for sb/plex/sab?

 

I never use xen, but I used esxi for 2 years..passthrough my gpu, usb so I can use it as desktop, so far no problem. I also have vm for pfsense, zoneminder. I just dont like the idea that I need to shutdown my pfsense,zoneminder,win7 when I want to upgrade my unraid (eg from unraid 6.0-beta4 to next coming beta5).