I'm most likely taking down my server today to rearrange the placing of my drives for better airflow. My base question is, does unraid care if I reconnect the drives in a different order back to the mb and sata cards or is it just looking for the uuid of the drives anyway?

 

 

I'm most likely taking down my server today to rearrange the placing of my drives for better airflow. My base question is, does unraid care if I reconnect the drives in a different order back to the mb and sata cards or is it just looking for the uuid of the drives anyway?

It is looking at BOTH the model/serial and the hardware interface device.  If they do not match, it will not start the array.

 

All you need to do is before moving them around, do a screen-print of the "Devices" page in the interface. (so you can re-assign the drives to their original slots in the array)

 

Then, stop the array, power down, and re-arrange them physically as desired.

 

Next, power up.  The array may start, but odds are if you moved the drives to new controller ports, it will first ask for confirmation.

 

Very likely you will need to go to the devices page to assign the drives back to their old positions in the array.  Most CRITICAL... assign the parity drive to the parity slot.

 

You will need to un-assign a drive from its current slot to assign it to a new, so many people just un-assign them all, and then assign them each in turn, using the screen-print taken earlier as their guide.

 

When you have the drives all back in their original slots in the array, go back to the main page and you will be able to "Start" the array.

 

Before you do this, it is highly recommended you do a full parity calc to ensure there are no disk problems that will surface to complicate your life.  Also, it is highly recommended to make a copy of the "config" folder after you cleanly stop the array, but before you power down to re-configure everything.  It will greatly help if anything were to happen. (loose cables and connections, discovered when powering back up, are common)

 

During this process, if any drive shows as un-formatted, DO NOT FORMAT IT.  It indicates you either have the parity drive assigned incorrectly, or a drive was unable to be mounted properly.  Post a syslog for guidance.

 

Joe L.

 

 

Kudos. Took a screenshot, rearranged everything and brought her back up. Did a bit of rearranging in the config and she came up without a problem at all.