I have been running version 4.7 for about 3 years with no problem on an old AMD sempron machine. I'd like to migrate my drives (4 data, 1 parity) to a new system (first generation Intel i7 920 with 16gb ram).  I'd also like to update to the latest 6.0 beta as well. 

 

Being that he sempron isn't a 64 bit processor, I'm guessing the best way to do this is to move the drives to the new hardware, get that working with the same old 4.7, and then move to 6.0? 

 

Is there much involved with moving to 6.0 from 4.7?  Currently I'm not doing anything other than just A straight NAS server, but I'd like to do this upgrade so I can run Plex, Sabnzbd, Sickbeard, etc). Any additional tips as well since I'm so far behind?

I'd seriously consider new drives and leave the old system intact. Several reasons for this.

 

First, at most you have 8TB of data. That translates into purchasing either 2 8TB drives, or 3 4TB drives, so the cost while not insignificant, isn't huge either.  The upsides of spending that money is huge in my opinion.

 

You get to keep the old system fully intact as a backup. You get to seamlessly migrate to the newly supported filesystem, XFS, without the headaches of trying to migrate later from one drive to another inside the same array. You get to start over with much greater data density, so each drive slot is more efficiently utilized. You get MUCH higher speeds from the newer drives. You get to play with V6 without worrying about nuking your data. If you act soon, you can get a new license for a new USB key for $30 and not have to worry about your old key dying while you're doing all these changes. You get to burn in the new server with no risk to current data.

If you can spring for it, I like the idea!  You not only would have the advantages he mentioned, you would be able to skip the upgrade from v4.7 to v5.0 (and possibly having to fix HPA's), which you would otherwise have to do, before you could start the upgrade from v5.0 to v6.0. The 2 guides you can examine:

  Migrating from unRAID 4.7 to unRAID 5.0

  Upgrading to UnRAID v6

 

This way, you will start a new v6 system with which you can play and experiment, before transferring all your data.  And end up with a backup server!

A couple thoughts ...

 

==>  If you don't currently have backups, then the suggestion above is absolutely what I'd do => any new high-capacity drives you buy will have an areal density of at least 1TB/platter, and will be significantly faster than your old drives;  the new system will have far higher capacity/disk; and you'll now then have a nice backup system (your old one).

 

 

==>  If, however, you already have good backups of your data, and simply want to move to v6, then it's actually trivial with your current setup.  Since it's strictly a NAS server, the simplest way to upgrade is to simply do an entirely new configuration with the latest v6 Beta.    Just do the following:

 

(a)  Run a parity check and confirm there are no issues -- i.e. zero errors on the disks and no sync errors.    If any are found (and corrected); then run it again until you have no errors.

 

(b)  Save a screenshot of the Web GUI that shows all of your drives and their assignments (with your configuration, the only thing that's really important is which drive is parity).

 

©  Copy the complete contents of your flash drive to a backup folder on your PC;  then wipe the flash drive and do a fresh install on it of the latest v6 download -- then copy your key file to it.    Alternatively (and this is actually a better choice), you could buy a second key for $30 and use a different flash drive altogether ... saving your old one as a spare.

 

(d)  Boot to the flash drive; and initialize your configuration by assigning ONLY your data drives.  Then Start the array and confirm that you "see" everything okay from your client.  Then Stop the array, assign the parity drive, and Start it again and let it do a parity sync.  [While you COULD use the "Trust Parity" option, I wouldn't at this point]    When the sync finishes, do a parity check to confirm all went well.

 

Done 

 

 

RobJ mentioned possible problems with HPA, and I don't know exactly how that might play out if jumping directly from 4.7 to 6.0

 

However, I do know that there was a change to the security model between 4.7 and 5.0 that would affect jumping directly from 4.7 to 6.0. Maybe that could be dealt with by simply running New Permissions.

If you simply do an entirely new config in v6 there's no problem => since you're not using any of the old v4.7 config info.

 

And any HPA's on the disks are fine ... these don't cause issues, they just result in a very tiny loss of space on the drives.    The only time an HPA is an issue is if there's one on drive you're assigning as parity -- causing the parity drive to not meet the criteria of >= the size of any data drive.

 

Basically, if you start anew, the old drives from v4.7 are simple data drives that you're going to use in a new configuration of UnRAID ... what version they came from is irrelevant.

 

The New Permissions Utility will be required when updating past version 4.7.

After reading the comments I do think I'm going to go with building a 6.0 unraid without touching my 4.7 system.  I'll just have to splurge for some new drives, build it, then copy things over to the new system.

Definitely the best idea ... and then you'll have a nice backup server (which I gather you don't currently have).

 

Buy your extra key SOON => the pricing is expected to change once v6 is released (maybe even with the RC) ... and I presume you want to take advantage of the $30 2nd key offer while it's still good.