crowdx42 Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 Hi all, so I am wondering what is the fastest way to move data from unRAID to a Windows Home Server setup. I am thinking that I could use the parity drive formatted to NTFS and copy the first drive to that drive, then format that first drive once copied to NTFS etc. Will this work? Initially I am going to install WHS onto an SSD drive and see how everything runs and so my unRAID setup should still remain intact and all I would need to do is reboot the server to my unRAID USB drive. This is a second server and so I will still have the main server running unRAID with all the original file copies. Thanks for any help that can be provided. Link to comment
trurl Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 Not sure I understand what you intend. If you convert any of your drives to NTFS unRAID won't mount them as array drives. Link to comment
crowdx42 Posted January 3, 2015 Author Share Posted January 3, 2015 Yes, the first step would be installing WHS on the SSD and reviewing the disks that unRAID is using, I believe that it is possible to see the drives but just not possible to write to them? Once I am happy that WHS will work correctly on the hardware (i5, 8gb of ram) I would then start to migrate data across the drives, this would be the point of no return. I believe up until this point I could simply remove the WHS SSD drive with the WHS install and boot up the server with the USB drive running unRAID? Link to comment
chickensoup Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 I'm also a little confused about what you are trying to achieve. If you are simply migrating then I would buy a data disk for WHS and then move data off your array one physical disk at a time, unassigning each as they become empty, moving them to the WHS box and repeating until you have no more disks left. This way you maintain parity protection as you go. However your comment about leaving the unraid server in tact implies you are intending on having two servers? Link to comment
crowdx42 Posted January 3, 2015 Author Share Posted January 3, 2015 I have 2 unRAID servers, one of them I want to reconfigure as a Windows Server and so I am thinking I can move the data between the unRAID file system to NTFS by the approach outlined above. Link to comment
garycase Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 I have 2 unRAID servers, one of them I want to reconfigure as a Windows Server and so I am thinking I can move the data between the unRAID file system to NTFS by the approach outlined above. Assuming you have backups of your data; just reformat the UnRAID drives to NTFS in WHS, and then just copy your data from the backups. If you don't have backups; then you'll need to do something along the lines you outlined => but I'd do as suggested above, and buy at least one extra data drive; then just copy everything from one of the UnRAID drives to that; then remove that drive from UnRAID and format it NTFS; then copy the next drive to it; etc. until all your data is migrated. Link to comment
crowdx42 Posted January 3, 2015 Author Share Posted January 3, 2015 So would using the unRAID parity drive not achieve the same result as buying another hard drive to start migrating data to? My thought is that using the parity drive would mean no hardware changes would be needed except for adding the OS drive. Link to comment
tdallen Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 If you pull your parity drive then your array will be unprotected. A better option might be to rearrange the data on your array (assuming it isn't too full) to free up a data disk, then pull it to start the migration process. Link to comment
thestewman Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 I have 2 unRAID servers, one of them I want to reconfigure as a Windows Server and so I am thinking I can move the data between the unRAID file system to NTFS by the approach outlined above. Why ? WHS is only useful as a backup for Windows systems. To use it as a backup for anything else you might as well use JBOD. To have any protection of the files you place on a WHS if v1 you have to use duplication which is a waste of storage. WHS 2011 has no file redundancy like duplication. When you need WHS the most you will find it is not available Link to comment
crowdx42 Posted January 3, 2015 Author Share Posted January 3, 2015 This is exactly what had me exploring WHS, I like everything unRAID does but I am a windows user and I hate command line installs etc. Also, in a lot of ways I was thinking that I was wasting a lot of power on this second server. Remember I have an unRAID server which mirrors the drive capacity of the i5 install but running on an AMD cpu, so I am not dumping unRAID, I will still be using it as a media server and backup solution. I was just thinking that WHS might fill some of the gaps I currently have, e.g. I have not been able to install any of the docker apps on unRAID 6 as yet and I know this would be really simple to set up in a windows environment. Link to comment
GHunter Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 I backup all my Windows PC's to unRAID using Windows Backup and Restore by creating a Windows System Image of the C: drive. I use a batch file that is scheduled on each Windows PC. The first time it runs it takes a while but the incremental backups take just a few minutes. Here is an example of my batch file contents: wbAdmin start backup -backupTarget:\\TOWER\Backups -include:C: -allCritical -quiet If you really want to run WHS for this, I'd setup a VM using unRAID and Xen or KVM, and install WHS on it and then go that way. It seems like a lot of trouble to migrate drives and tear down an unRAID server just for this purpose. Of course, if you are just trying to get rid of 1 unRAID server and consolidate some hardware, then I can understand you going forward with this. Just something to think about. Gary Link to comment
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