schford Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 So - Just wondering how people back up unRAID itself - eg the flash drive. Is it as simple as pointing crashplan at the flash share itself? Cheers Stuart Link to comment
wgstarks Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 I'm sure Crash Plan works great. I use Carbon Copy Cloner. Mount the flash drive on my desktop computer and run CCC on a regular schedule to backup the flash to my desktop. Just don't backup to your array. You could wind up in a situation where you need to use the backup and can't access it. Link to comment
gundamguy Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 I don't think backing up the Flash has much value unless you have created some scripts of your own that you want to have a back-up copy of. I also think you can actually increase your risk of data loss by simply backing up and restoring the flash without any other knowlage of what you are doing. If you use a backup that doesn't 100% match your current configuration you will have data loss. Things you should backup. Your .key file, any personal scripts. Anything else is just asking for trouble IMO. Link to comment
Russ Uno Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 I make a new folder on my Mac named"UnRaid-110415", where 110415 is the date and drag the contents of the Flash Drive mounted on the desktop via SMB or AFP to the folder.. The Mac gets backed up to my server as an image file, so there are multiple copies. Link to comment
trurl Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 I make a new folder on my Mac named"UnRaid-110415", where 110415 is the date and drag the contents of the Flash Drive mounted on the desktop via SMB or AFP to the folder.. The Mac gets backed up to my server as an image file, so there are multiple copies. The flash stores your array configuration and status in config/super.dat If you don't stop the array before creating the backup, then that backup will indicate that your array is running. If you try to boot from this backup, unRAID will see that your array was running and will start a correcting parity check due to unclean shutdown. Also, having multiple copies is a bad idea. If you boot from a backup that has an old array configuration, you could have a situation where unRAID begins to write parity to the wrong disk. This has happened to others who have reused an old parity drive for data. Link to comment
gundamguy Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 I make a new folder on my Mac named"UnRaid-110415", where 110415 is the date and drag the contents of the Flash Drive mounted on the desktop via SMB or AFP to the folder.. The Mac gets backed up to my server as an image file, so there are multiple copies. The flash stores your array configuration and status in config/super.dat If you don't stop the array before creating the backup, then that backup will indicate that your array is running. If you try to boot from this backup, unRAID will see that your array was running and will start a correcting parity check due to unclean shutdown. Also, having multiple copies is a bad idea. If you boot from a backup that has an old array configuration, you could have a situation where unRAID begins to write parity to the wrong disk. This has happened to others who have reused an old parity drive for data. Based on these things, and the fact that to fully restore your array from Flash failure or corruption you don't need any data from your prior flash drive is reason enough that you should really not waste your time and hard drive space on backing this up. Also I said back up your .key earlier, but in hindsigh that doesn't help at all if your flash actually dies. Link to comment
JonathanM Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 Also I said back up your .key earlier, but in hindsigh that doesn't help at all if your flash actually dies. It's very helpful, just copy the key to the config folder on the newly set up unraid usb stick, and when it boots up, it will walk you through transferring the license to the new stick. Very painless, no need to bug limetech, it's all automatic. Link to comment
gundamguy Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 Also I said back up your .key earlier, but in hindsigh that doesn't help at all if your flash actually dies. It's very helpful, just copy the key to the config folder on the newly set up unraid usb stick, and when it boots up, it will walk you through transferring the license to the new stick. Very painless, no need to bug limetech, it's all automatic. That's news to me. Also really cool. So I back to my prior point, back up your .key file and any scripts or I guess plugin information that you don't want to lose but otherwise it's better to not mess with making a frequent backups of the flash. Link to comment
wisem2540 Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 Agreed. Backing up the flash is useless. It's more important to document which slot each drive is in Link to comment
tdallen Posted November 5, 2015 Share Posted November 5, 2015 Call me old school, but I backup the flash drive prior to every OS upgrade. It's a lot easier to recover from a failed upgrade if you have a clean backup. Link to comment
trurl Posted November 5, 2015 Share Posted November 5, 2015 I think it's OK to backup your flash, as long as you understand about config/super.dat. You can actually stop the array and still access the flash share over the network. So it is possible to back it up in a stopped state without removing it. And if you're unsure about it, you can actually restore it but leave out config/super.dat. You will just have to reassign all your drives. I typically do back mine up after any major change, such as OS upgrades or drive changes, by stopping the array and copying it to my PC over the network. You just need to be diligent about it, and never restore config/super.dat that has a different drive configuration than your current one. Link to comment
Russ Uno Posted November 5, 2015 Share Posted November 5, 2015 Also, having multiple copies is a bad idea. If you boot from a backup that has an old array configuration, you could have a situation where unRAID begins to write parity to the wrong disk. This has happened to others who have reused an old parity drive for data. That's why I add the date as part of the name and it has allowed me to restore a previous version without issue, like going between v5 and v6 and back again a number of times. BTW I also take screen shots of my drive assignments and put them in my UnRaid backups folder also with the date as part of the name. Link to comment
schford Posted November 5, 2015 Author Share Posted November 5, 2015 Interesting thread -thanks guys, I guess I had foolishly assumed the information on the dockers and plugins and users/permissions and shares etc were stored on the flash drive - are they then actually stored on the hard disks? Cheers Stuart Link to comment
trurl Posted November 5, 2015 Share Posted November 5, 2015 Interesting thread -thanks guys, I guess I had foolishly assumed the information on the dockers and plugins and users/permissions and shares etc were stored on the flash drive - are they then actually stored on the hard disks? Cheers Stuart Your assumption is correct, information. You can actually examine many of the files on your flash, since they are just text. In particular, any .cfg file is a text file that stores some sort of settings from the webUI. Plugin code is also on flash, or will be downloaded to flash based on the plugin information which is stored on flash. Docker code is in docker.img, which will be on a disk, but the information needed to download that code and run the docker is on flash. And of course, any persistent data used by plugins or dockers are on disk, assuming you have configured them correctly. Go ahead and explore your flash drive and a lot of things will make more sense. Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.