Direct Drive access

[jim80z]

All,

 

Quick question. I have backups of the direct disk shares i.e. not the file shares but Disk1 disk2 etc. I am now looking at a possible server rebuild. So if I replace all the old drives with new. i.e. rebuild the disk array with new drives, then share out the various disks, then copy the backups to the disks, reset permissions etc......will all the data be parity protected? or do I have to transfer the files via the samba shares and not the samba disks.

 

Thanks

 

Jim

[trurl]

It may be that no copying is needed. For example, one of the meanings of the word rebuild around here is to rebuild the contents of a drive onto a new, possibly bigger drive.

 

Maybe some more details on exactly what you mean by rebuild.

 

To answer your question the way you have stated it, any time you write to an array with a parity disk, the data is parity protected. So assuming you are doing the copying to an unRAID system with parity, then yes it is parity protected.

[jim80z]

Hi,

 

I will ellaborate. So whats happened is :

- My array is 5x1TB (includes a parity drive) and Im going to 5x3TB on V6

- As prep I started pre clearing the 3GB drives, making sure parity on the 5x1TB array was ok and then doing 1 final backup of the 4x1TB Data disks at the disk level i.e. I share via samba not only the file shares e.g. Movies, Music, Photos et al, but also Disk1, Disk2, Disk3 and Disk4

- I found Disk2 in the 5x1TB array was failing so I percleared a spare 1GB drive, rebooted the server minus Disk2, assigned the new Disk2 and hit start array. It started and finished a rebuild of Disk2 and then did not want to mount it. I recleared it and tried again with no luck.

- I keep regular backups of Disk1,2,3,4 (I mount the four drive shares on a mac and use Chronosynch to a drive array connected to my mac). So I am not worried about losing any data as I have Disk1,2,3,4 stored in another array

- I have another post (http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=40735.0) wrt my Disk2 problem but it doesn't look like there are any suggestions on how to bring this back online so I can then start swapping 1TB drives with 3TB drives and let Unraid do the rebuilds

- I also noticed that the array without disk2 looks to be missing the disk2 data i.e. the 3 data disks plus parity is not giving me the full array as it was.

- So Im almost at the point where I think I will rip all the 1TB disks out, mount the new 3TB disks and form a new empty parity protected array of 5x3TB

- Then share out the 4x3TB disks and use chronosynch to recover from the mac back to Disk1,2,3,4    *

- I want to leave everything else on Unraid the same i.e. users, shares, etc etc etc      **

 

So questions on the last two items marked with an "*"

 

* If I recover at the disk share level does the parity drive come along for the ride and get built as the data is transferred to data Disks 1,2,3,4 OR do I have to reconstitute the data at the file share level i.e. Movies, Music etc etc i.e. copy from the mac all the moves to movies share , all the music to music share etc

** Can I leave all the Users, Share , etc settings in unraid as I create and start the new empty array of 5x3TB disks? or will unraid freak out as the empty array (i.e. no folders of Movie, Music etc until I move the files back to Disk1,2,3,4) of 5x3TB comes on line

 

Hope that makes it more clear?

 

Thanks

 

Jim

[JonathanM]

You will be fine building the new array and restoring disk1-1, etc. As long as you are accessing shares over the network, disk or user, parity is kept in sync at all times. You really have to work at it to mess up parity, by mounting and accessing stuff that is not exposed normally. User shares will start out as not enabled if you do a new install of unraid, and that's fine, I'd leave them that way until all your data is back on the disk1 - disk4 shares. As soon as you enable user shares in the settings, unraid will apply all your settings that are stored in the share config files.

 

Since you are posting this in the V6 forum, I'm assuming you are setting up a fresh V6 install and moving the appropriate files (license and config) and migrating to new disks at the same time?

[jim80z]

Hi

 

Thanks

 

No re V6. I was on V5 and ugraded to V6 a couple of weeks ago. So am already on V6 and wasn't intending on rebuilding from scratch just doing a removal of old disks, reboot, assign new disks, start the array, then restore disks 1-4.

 

[JonathanM]

Hi

 

Thanks

 

No re V6. I was on V5 and ugraded to V6 a couple of weeks ago. So am already on V6 and wasn't intending on rebuilding from scratch just doing a removal of old disks, reboot, assign new disks, start the array, then restore disks 1-4.

Ok. Then I'd just disable user shares until you are done restoring data. When you turn user shares back on everything should just work. It would probably be fine with user shares on, but just to eliminate the possibility of you messing yourself up by manipulating stuff on the user shares before the data is all there, I'd turn them off.

[jim80z]

Many thanks for the answer.