Super_Chicken Posted May 22, 2015 Share Posted May 22, 2015 My current Unraid 6b12 system is currently on an older motherboard, cpu etc. I had got it from a friend and had issues day one with it and how he set up sab and sickbeard and couch potato. The hard drives (4tb, 3tb, 2tb) are connected through the mobo sata spots, pci sas cards, pci sata cards, esata drive enclosures etc. It's a mess and it's slow and inconsistent when moving files around. I currently got new hardware, including an areca 1880i and hp sas expander off a friend who was using it for another server running windows with areca doing the raid. I ran the demo of the stable unraid 5 on the areca hardware with a few spare hard drives connected to the areca in JBOD passthough and it's been stable for the last 2 months. I'm just wondering what is the best way of porting over all my existing data to the new system? The two options I'm thinking are as follows: 1) Buy a second usb key with another pro license. Load the areca with a 3-4 new 4tb drives, and migrate the data over from my old server. As I empty drives off my current server, pull them and add them into the new server. This would be the most time consuming, but I have all the important data already backed up. 2) The second option and I'm not sure if I can do this or not. Would simply be to move all the hard drives over, as well as my existing usb and it boots up and recognizes all the drives. I'm unsure if my areca doing JBOD would cause unraid to see the drive any differently causing them to not be recognized. I appreciate any feedback from others who have done this and have any experience with using an areca for unraid. I had read some stories about compatibility between unraid and areca cards being used. I am also still on the fence if I should use unraid 5.0.6 stable, or the latest unraid 6. I only use APC, sab, sick beard, couch potato, and would eventually use plex and crashplan down the line. Quote Link to comment
RobJ Posted May 22, 2015 Share Posted May 22, 2015 If you have already demonstrated that the Areca and SAS cards work with unRAID, then Option #2 all the way! It should just work! Moving to v6 is going to take more time and thought, with the addon software you want to run (APC is built in now). Make sure the hardware is fine first, before beginning any other upgrades, one problem at a time. When ready, please see the Upgrading to UnRAID v6 guide. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted May 22, 2015 Share Posted May 22, 2015 Since you're already running v6, I'd just do option 2 with your existing USB key => as Rob noted, it should simply "just work". Then, AFTER you've made that switch, you should upgrade from the Beta you're running to the latest RC. Quote Link to comment
Super_Chicken Posted May 22, 2015 Author Share Posted May 22, 2015 Okay awesome, I just worry because my test with the areca was to confirm that it sees the hard drives and they wake up and sleep nicely. I don't want to port all the hard drives and USB key over to the new H/W only to boot it up and then have unraid see nothing. Then when I JBOD each one on the areca, they are passed through but unraid tries to format them for whatever reason. Then if I have to move them back to the old hardware they may still not work and I'm left losing everything. (I have the important stuff backed up, but I'd rather not rerip and re-encode all my media. I do have 3 machines ( including the future areca server), that I suppose I could run the demo on with 3 drives, then move them to new hardware to see if it still boots up and plays nicely with the areca, before doing it on my system. Also provided the above works beautifully, does anyone foresee any problems upgrading to RC3 first. Then attempting to move over all the hardware? I'm currently using APC on v6 now and noticed it doesn't work as nicely on v5 either, so ultimately I don't need the stable v5 version. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted May 22, 2015 Share Posted May 22, 2015 Certainly not a bad idea to test with a demo key just to confirm the Areca's seen okay before moving your actual drives. Also, there's no problem upgrading to RC3 first and then doing the move. Just don't do BOTH at the same time ... one step at a time is always a better idea (... i.e. upgrade to RC3; confirm it's working okay; THEN do the move) Quote Link to comment
Super_Chicken Posted May 22, 2015 Author Share Posted May 22, 2015 Certainly not a bad idea to test with a demo key just to confirm the Areca's seen okay before moving your actual drives. Also, there's no problem upgrading to RC3 first and then doing the move. Just don't do BOTH at the same time ... one step at a time is always a better idea (... i.e. upgrade to RC3; confirm it's working okay; THEN do the move) Absolutely, I'll test tonight on a separate machine and report my findings. While I putter around in the demo environment I may upgrade to RC3 on my main server. Thanks for the help. Quote Link to comment
Super_Chicken Posted May 23, 2015 Author Share Posted May 23, 2015 So in testing this out, it looks like moving the drives from one to the other is fine. I did it using a demo license and 3 hard drives, moved data onto the disks and moved from one machine to another and no problems. In moving over my actual hardware it now looks like I'm encountering the following issue. The areca/HP sas expander is able to pass on all 21 drives (1 cache, 1 parity, 19 data drives). During my test scenario with 21 other drives, windows was able to see them. Then when I tested with 3 of those test drives they worked fine in unraid. However it looks like unraid is unable to resolve more than 8/9 of them, giving them wonky "(sd#)" titles and not showing the actual serial's. So I cannot line up the data drives the way they previously were. Any advice? Quote Link to comment
Super_Chicken Posted May 23, 2015 Author Share Posted May 23, 2015 It looks like it's a similar issue like this one: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=30956.0 Except it's when I have more than 8-9 drives. I took out the two 4tb drives and the rest still went unrecognized. Quote Link to comment
RobJ Posted May 23, 2015 Share Posted May 23, 2015 Also, check out Areca Controller Configuration for unRAID. Be sure it has the latest firmware. Quote Link to comment
Super_Chicken Posted May 24, 2015 Author Share Posted May 24, 2015 Also, check out Areca Controller Configuration for unRAID. Be sure it has the latest firmware. Thanks, I've followed the guide and names are now shown for all my drives. It looks like I am unable to start my array. It's showing that I have too many drives attached. Even when I none are in any of the drop downs. I'm wondering if changing hardware has corrupted my pro key? Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted May 24, 2015 Share Posted May 24, 2015 I seem to remember this message also occurring if the date/time was wrong on the server. Might be worth checking that. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted May 24, 2015 Share Posted May 24, 2015 The attached device limit was removed in RC3 => upgrade to that and all should be well. Quote Link to comment
Super_Chicken Posted May 24, 2015 Author Share Posted May 24, 2015 The attached device limit was removed in RC3 => upgrade to that and all should be well. Updated to RC3 and reloaded all my disks in. Started it up and everything is there. You guys are champs I appreciate the help. If anyone lived near Toronto I'd have you over for beer and steaks! Now that it's up, I'm going to check to make sure everything loads nicely. I may fiddle to see if these hard drives are recognized through my HP SAS expander, through the Areca. That would be ideal! Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted May 24, 2015 Share Posted May 24, 2015 ... If anyone lived near Toronto I'd have you over for beer and steaks! Wish you'd had this problem a year ago => we took the cross-Canada train trip last summer, starting in Toronto. Would have been nice to have a nice steak to start the trip off [actually, we did ... but I had to pay for it ] Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted May 24, 2015 Share Posted May 24, 2015 Updated to RC3 and reloaded all my disks in. Started it up and everything is there. You guys are champs I appreciate the help. If anyone lived near Toronto I'd have you over for beer and steaks! Offer open only to those who helped you or to all users in general? Quote Link to comment
Super_Chicken Posted May 24, 2015 Author Share Posted May 24, 2015 Updated to RC3 and reloaded all my disks in. Started it up and everything is there. You guys are champs I appreciate the help. If anyone lived near Toronto I'd have you over for beer and steaks! Offer open only to those who helped you or to all users in general? [/quote Ohoh, here come all the lurkers! I swapped out the second older sata card and hooked up the HP sas expander through the Areca, all drives are being recognized by unraid which is great. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted May 24, 2015 Share Posted May 24, 2015 For the lurkers, there's a great steakhouse in the Fairmont Royal York (where we stayed). Not exactly inexpensive - but GREAT food Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted May 24, 2015 Share Posted May 24, 2015 That is one old hotel. Super nice, but old. Quote Link to comment
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