Complete noob researching/prepping for upgrade to latest stable version

[skyking376]

When I say complete noob I mean it! It took me about 8-10 minutes to remember/figure out what version of Unraid I have! So please be gentle.

 

I have Version 4.7

 

According to the top of the forum list (very helpful by the way) current official release is v5.0.6. So is there a "roadmap" of what to do in what order?

 

Things I wanted to do/have but could never figure out even following the forums, wiki's, and guides were:

1) Clean power-down from manually pushing power button on front of server box (on the guide to do it my setup was able to with the test for compatibility but never could get it to work)

2) Automate 1 month parity checks

3) Have emails sent to me for errors, parity checks, etc

4) Probably some other cool stuff but a non-techie like me to get it to work seems like a momentous task.

 

 

My specs:

- 6 (2TB) hard drives. 1 parity, 5 data

- Categories (I think Unraid calls them "shares") are Blu-ray movies, Movies, TV shows, Kids, and Music, + Flash (which is boot thumb drive)

- I always do a parity check every month manually with no errors ever found and had this media center for ~ 2 years.

 

I am not sure what information to provide and if you reply I kindly ask that you assist me in HOW to find information you are asking as I am a noob.

 

Maybe there is no good reason to upgrade?

 

[garycase]

You may want to wait a bit until v6 is released ... it's currently getting very close to the RC (Release Candidate) stage, so I'd anticipate a "final" release within a few months.

 

The extra features you want are a bit simpler to implement in v6, since it has built-in notifications and UPS support.

 

As for your comment, "Maybe there is no good reason to upgrade?" ==>  It's true that if your system is working perfectly for you any upgrade has some risk ... but as long as you're careful in the process all should be fine.  The most compelling upgrade is support for disks larger than 2TB => how important that is to you depends on how many spare disk slots you currently have and what percentage of your array is being used.  I'd definitely plan on upgrading within the next year or so.    If you need the > 2TB support soon, you could upgrade to v5 and then later move to v6 (or just upgrade to a v6 Beta or RC).    But if you're happy with your current setup, I'd just wait for the v6 release.

 

[dikkiedirk]

The larger than 2 TB support was in fact the reason why I upgraded from 4.7 to 5beta a few years ago. But like Gary says if you are happy with 4.7 at the moment then just wait a little longer. V5 and V6 have matured nicely though with a much nicer GUI as a BIG bonus.

[chickensoup]

Fyi included in each release is a readme file with step by step instructions on how to i pgrade based on your current version. 5.0.6 is very stable and mature now and i would recommend it over 4.7. That said, v6 is a huge upgrade with a tonne of new features and the latest betas are very promising. It is likely an RC for v6 is not far away (take that with a grain of salt..)