March 28, 201511 yr I'm thinking of upgrading my unraid 4.7 to the latest stable 5.x version. Do I have to buy a new key? Also, why would I choose active directory? I basically have an unraid system where I store a lot of video (a lot of recorded TV, home videos) and pictures and music and all other home data. I have about 5TB of data. We have one main home theater/TV computer, and two other computers that connect to the unraid server. I use windows media server to view recorded TV from my home theater/TV computer. Thank you.
March 28, 201511 yr I'm thinking of upgrading my unraid 4.7 to the latest stable 5.x version. Do I have to buy a new key? Also, why would I choose active directory? I basically have an unraid system where I store a lot of video (a lot of recorded TV, home videos) and pictures and music and all other home data. I have about 5TB of data. We have one main home theater/TV computer, and two other computers that connect to the unraid server. I use windows media server to view recorded TV from my home theater/TV computer. Thank you. No you do not have to buy a new key. You would only choose to use active directory is you had a Domain Controller running Windows Server and wanted your unRaid server to be part of the domain. 99.9%+ home networks do not fall into that category.
March 29, 201511 yr As noted above, your key is good for any version of UnRAID you choose to run. Are you having specific issues you want to resolve by upgrading? If so, you should resolve those FIRST. Then it's fairly straightforward to move to v5 ... and you'll then have support for drives > 2TB (by far the most compelling reason to move to v5).
March 29, 201511 yr Author Thank you both. I have no issues right now at all. I never have had any issue. In fact, I just rebuilt the array (amazingly easy to do by the way) due to one drive getting some errors on it. Unfortunately, I had just purchased a drive to make the array bigger, then immediately had to (1) use my hot spare as another array drive and (2) use the new drive as my hot spare. Now, I'll have to buy another drive. I am not using any drive larger than 2GB. In fact, I was going to replace a 1.0GB with a 2GB, and when I'll do that, I'd still have two 1.5GBs I could replace. If I replaced all three with 2GB, that would give me another 2GB, which is a lot of space for me. I guess I could consider going to 3GB drives, as I could run fewer of them, but I'm not sure how to remove (and not subsequently replace) drives.
March 29, 201511 yr Bang/Buck is definitely with the 3 and 4 TB drives right now. But if you already have the others then no cost to use them. Of course, if you do go to bigger drives then you will have to use the first bigger drive as parity. And you will have to move from 4.7.
March 29, 201511 yr ... I guess I could consider going to 3GB drives, as I could run fewer of them, but I'm not sure how to remove (and not subsequently replace) drives. To remove -- and NOT replace -- a drive, the simplest approach is to do a New Config (an easy option with v5; a bit more complex with v4.7). Given that you're having no problems, and apparently don't really need the extra space, you could simply stay with v4.7 for now. HOWEVER ... it's MUCH easier to upgrade while the system's in good shape than to get in a position where you have a failed drive and are trying to do it then. If I understand your current situation, you have a spare 2TB drive (your "hot spare"), and 3 drives you could upgrade [a 1TB and two 1.5TB]. ==> so what I'd suggest is the following: (1) Run a parity check to confirm everything is good (no sync errors and no drive read errors) (2) Upgrade to v5.0.6 (the current stable release) Basically you just have to copy bzroot and bzimage to the flash drive, then reboot, unless you have password protected user accounts. Read the details here: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Upgrade_Instructions (3) Once you're running v5 okay, then buy yourself a 3TB (or 4TB) drive. Replace your current parity drive with this drive. You'll need to start the server so it shows the original parity drive as "missing"; then Stop the array; assign the new parity drive; and then Start the array again and it will rebuild parity onto the new drive. (4) When the new parity drive has been built, run a parity check to confirm all went well (zero sync errors etc.). (5) Now you can, if you want, replace your 1TB drive with your old 2TB parity drive. You'll still have a 2TB "hot spare" ... which you can keep as a spare until it's needed. But any future drives you buy can now be the same size as the parity drive you just installed (3TB or 4TB). The only cost associated with that is ~ $100 or so for a 3TB drive [The excellent 3TB WD Reds are often available for about $110; the 3TB WD Green's are under $100] You could, if you want, move some data around to larger drives and run fewer drives. With v5 you can set a completely new configuration by simply going to the utilities menu and select "New Config" => but there's no real reason to do that. I'd just upgrade as you need space ... and with the ability for those upgrades to be larger drives, your system will last you a LONG time without changing the basic physical setup (i.e. # of drives).
March 31, 201511 yr Author Thank you, I will give that a try. Yes, right now I have a 2TB "hot" cache drive and just bought another one to replace a 1TB array drive. I have a 2TB parity drive, but do not have any 2TB array drives (at least not now). If I use the 2TB "hot" cache drive to replace the 1TB array drive, and then use the new 2TB drive as a "hot" cache, I'll start looking at replacing both the cache and parity with 3TB drives, and all the array drives with 2TB drives.
June 20, 201511 yr Author Well, I'm an idiot. I bought another 2TB drive. I should've done as you suggested and bought a 3TB parity drive, then I could increase my capacity a huge amount. As it is now, I can increase my capacity only another 2TB, and I have to replace three drives to do so. On the other hand, I don't need that much space, at least now. Recorded TV is what's taking a ton of space, and if I could just bring myself to delete shows, I'd have a lot of space. I mean, who needs 60 hours of Antiques Roadshow? ;-)
June 20, 201511 yr ... if I could just bring myself to delete shows, I'd have a lot of space. I mean, who needs 60 hours of Antiques Roadshow? ;-) Delete ?? Not in my vocabulary !! Easier to just buy more disk space
June 21, 201511 yr ... if I could just bring myself to delete shows, I'd have a lot of space. I mean, who needs 60 hours of Antiques Roadshow? ;-) Delete ?? Not in my vocabulary !! Easier to just buy more disk space In the case of this particular show, why not just stream from PBS website?
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