I'd like to know the best way to revert a pro usb key back to defaults. I want to get rid of all settings, add-ons, etc and just go back to default. Not sure of a safe and efficient way to do it.

I'd like to know the best way to revert a pro usb key back to defaults. I want to get rid of all settings, add-ons, etc and just go back to default. Not sure of a safe and efficient way to do it.

Make sure you have a copy of your license (.key) file backed up on your PC/Mac and then follow the instructions for setting up a new system (e.g. Starting with formatting the USB drive), and at the end copy the license key back to the Config folder on the USB drive.

I'd like to know the best way to revert a pro usb key back to defaults. I want to get rid of all settings, add-ons, etc and just go back to default. Not sure of a safe and efficient way to do it.

Make sure you have a copy of your license (.key) file backed up on your PC/Mac and then follow the instructions for setting up a new system (e.g. Starting with formatting the USB drive), and at the end copy the license key back to the Config folder on the USB drive.

And then you will have to reassign all of your drives. Make sure you know which drive is parity. If you accidentally assign a data drive to the parity slot you will lose its data.

 

curiosity question. Would the .key file work on other free version USB keys? IE: Could I install unraid on 3 keys and just place the key to make duplicate backups?

curiosity question. Would the .key file work on other free version USB keys? IE: Could I install unraid on 3 keys and just place the key to make duplicate backups?

Not quite sure what you are asking here.  The .key file is tied to the GUID of a particular USB stick and will not work on any other stick.

AH ok then.

 

Is it possible to take an image of the USB key after it's all set back to defaults to ensure a backup in case I want to try to upgrade to unraid 6?

AH ok then.

 

Is it possible to take an image of the USB key after it's all set back to defaults to ensure a backup in case I want to try to upgrade to unraid 6?

Yes - the USB stick is in FAT format so you can simply copy off all the files on it to a PC/Mac.  In fact it is recommended that you do this before any major upgrade to give you a simple reversion path if needed.

But be careful to never restore a backup of the flash that was taken before any changes to the disk configuration. Another user got a new parity drive then used his old parity drive for another data drive. Later, he was having problems, so restored his flash backup. Unfortunately, that backup still considered that old parity drive to still be the parity drive, and unRAID began writing parity to it.

 

Any time I make any important changes, I stop the array and copy the flash share (still accessible over the network with the array stopped) to my PC. If you try to make a copy with the array running, then if you restore that backup and boot from it, unRAID will think the array was not stopped cleanly and will automatically start a correcting parity check.