I have 2 ReiserFS drives I would like to convert to XFS.

 

At the moment I have 4x 4TB drives

Drive                  File System          Has data

1                        Parity                  N/A

2                        ReiserFS              Yes

3                        ReiserFS                No

4                        XFS                      No

 

I would like to convert drive 3 (no data).

 

To do this, do I

1.) Stop the array

2.) Switch the file system

3.) Start the array and format the disk

 

Should I do a parity check before doing this conversion?

 

Note: all 4GB of my really important data is backed up to a memory stick

If you want to get rid of all Reiser disks in that scenario, here's what I'd do ...

 

(a)  Do a New Config with only drives 1, 3, and 4 assigned.    Do the parity sync.    Change the file system on disk #3 and let it format the drive.  Then do a parity check to confirm all is okay.

 

... at this point you'll have a system with parity plus 2 XFS data drive.

 

(b)  Connect the Reiser disk with data (formerly #2) to a PC, and install the free LinuxReader.  [ http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/ ]    Copy all of the data from that disk to your UnRAID array.  Then use Windows disk management to remove the current partition from that disk [be CERTAIN your data is all copied and "look" at the data on UnRAID to confirm that before you remove the partition].

 

©  Put the old disk #2 back in the UnRAID system; boot to the Web GUI;  Stop the array; add the disk to the configuration and set the file system to XFS;  and then Start the array and let it format the disk.

 

Done :-)

 

Note:  Alternatively, you could simply copy ALL of the data from disk #2 to disk #4;  then Stop the array; change the file system for disks 2 & 3;  and then Start the array and let it format those disks.

 

Just realized on re-reading my post that you (a) already have one XFS formatted disk; and (b) have less than a disk's worth of data on the array => so this is an easier and quicker way to do the conversion.

 

Thanks for the help.  I performed option 2 using rsync to migrate files.  It was easier than I thought.  Once I moved all data off the other drives (including cache) and verified that data only existed on drive 3 (removing the old folders on disk 1 made this easier to verify) all it required was stopping the array and then reformatting the drives.

 

It seems like the migration part could be automated.  Windows Home Server v1 had a similar feature where you could select to remove a drive and it would ensure that the files existed on a different disk.  In this case I'm stopping short of removing the disk and allowing it to be reformatted.

Glad it's all done and was so simple.    Having such a small system with so little data definitely made it a much simpler task than it would be for those who have very full systems with a large number of drives.  Personally, although I'll move to XFS with new drives in the future, I don't really see any compelling reason to convert all of my existing drives.