truetype Posted November 22, 2015 Share Posted November 22, 2015 Hello community! I have borrowed a complete server from a friend for a year, and now I've finally bought myself a own complete system! I want to start over with the new system or move everything there and continue as normal. As my setup looks right now it has 2x 2TB disks. In my new system it has 2x 4TB disks, 1x 250GB SSD as I gonna use as cache and 2x 500GB disks. I have some plugins that I setup on my system and if I can just move everything easy, that would be great. Otherwise I can start over fresh. How do I as simply as possible continue to use my new system? Please explain step by step and I will be most thankful! -Sincerely TrueType Link to comment
truetype Posted November 22, 2015 Author Share Posted November 22, 2015 I found this http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ#How_do_I_move_my_existing_unRAID_array_to_a_new_system.3F And also http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Shrink_array But I don't really get if I shall move my disks and start unraid in my new system first or if I can simply do all this right away. Link to comment
truetype Posted November 22, 2015 Author Share Posted November 22, 2015 I got an idea! Can I simply add my 4 TB disk to my system that I am using right now with the 2x TB disks and make a parity check and then I can move my 4TB and start my new system with all the new drives?? Anyone? Please some experience or advice is strongly appreciated! Link to comment
ksman75 Posted November 22, 2015 Share Posted November 22, 2015 I got an idea! Can I simply add my 4 TB disk to my system that I am using right now with the 2x TB disks and make a parity check and then I can move my 4TB and start my new system with all the new drives?? Anyone? Please some experience or advice is strongly appreciated! That's the best way, but you will have to move all the old drives to the new system, then replace them one at a time, rebuild the new drive, then move to the next one. You can't rebuild with just the parity drive. Link to comment
truetype Posted November 22, 2015 Author Share Posted November 22, 2015 I got an idea! Can I simply add my 4 TB disk to my system that I am using right now with the 2x TB disks and make a parity check and then I can move my 4TB and start my new system with all the new drives?? Anyone? Please some experience or advice is strongly appreciated! That's the best way, but you will have to move all the old drives to the new system, then replace them one at a time, rebuild the new drive, then move to the next one. You can't rebuild with just the parity drive. Okey thanks! So if I understood you right I do like this. 1. Move USB + the 2x old 2TB disks + 1x new 4TB disk to my new computer. 2. Start unRAID. 3. Start parity check. 4. Replace one of the two old 2TB disks with my 2nd new 4TB disk by following these steps http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ#How_do_I_replace_a_hard_disk.3F 5. Then replace the last old 2TB disk with one of the new 500GB disks or simply shrinking the array by following the steps here http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Shrink_array Am I correct? Link to comment
ksman75 Posted November 22, 2015 Share Posted November 22, 2015 Okey thanks! So if I understood you right I do like this. 1. Move USB + the 2x 2TB disks + 1x 4TB disk to my new computer. 2. Start unRAID. 3. Start parity check. 4. Replace one of the two 2TB disks with my 2nd 4TB disk by following these steps http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ#How_do_I_replace_a_hard_disk.3F 5. Then replace the last 2TB disk with one of the 500GB disks or simply shrinking the array by following the steps here http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Shrink_array Am I correct? Basically yes. Give me a few to compose my thoughts... Link to comment
ksman75 Posted November 22, 2015 Share Posted November 22, 2015 Okey thanks! So if I understood you right I do like this. 1. Move USB + the 2x 2TB disks + 1x 4TB disk to my new computer. 2. Start unRAID. 3. Start parity check. 4. Replace one of the two 2TB disks with my 2nd 4TB disk by following these steps http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ#How_do_I_replace_a_hard_disk.3F 5. Then replace the last 2TB disk with one of the 500GB disks or simply shrinking the array by following the steps here http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Shrink_array Am I correct? I don't know how many drive bays you have so I would take all of your drives out of the new system. Move all the drives and flash from the old system to the new one. Boot it up and make sure everything is working. I am running unRaid 6.1.4 and when I add a drive it forces me to preclear the drive, so this is what I would do... Install one of the 4TB drives but do not add it to unRaid yet. 1. Open a console on your server and login as root. Then... 2. cd /boot/ 3. sh preclear_disk.sh /dev/sd? "?" will show on the unRaid MAIN page... This is going to take a looong time... When it is finished add this drive to the array as your parity drive. Add the second 4TB drive to the server and repeat steps 1-3. When this is finished, add this drive to the array. Do this for the remaining drives you will be using in the new array with the exception of your cache drive. I would save that for the last step. You will now have parity, one 4TB drive, two 500GB drives and your two original 2TB drives. Now you can follow the instructions for shrinking the array to take out the two 2TB drives. I would do this one drive at a time, just to be on the safe side. Now I would add your cache drive and if everything went well, everything should be working. Link to comment
trurl Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 Hello community! I have borrowed a complete server from a friend for a year, and now I've finally bought myself a own complete system! I want to start over with the new system or move everything there and continue as normal. As my setup looks right now it has 2x 2TB disks. In my new system it has 2x 4TB disks, 1x 250GB SSD as I gonna use as cache and 2x 500GB disks. I have some plugins that I setup on my system and if I can just move everything easy, that would be great. Otherwise I can start over fresh. How do I as simply as possible continue to use my new system? Please explain step by step and I will be most thankful! -Sincerely TrueType Not really enough details to go on here so I will just make some assumptions and we can go from there to make corrections. Old system: 2TB parity + 1x2TB data disk. New system: 4TB parity + 1x4TB data + 2x500GB data + 1x250GB cache. Put your flash drive and the disks from the old system into your new system and boot up and check that everything is working just like it did in your old system. Preclear all of the new disks except the SSD. Replace 2TB parity with 4TB and let parity rebuild. Replace 2TB data with other 4TB and let that data disk rebuild. Add 2x500GB data. Since they are clear parity will still be valid. Let unRAID format them. Add 1x250GB SSD cache. Let unRAID format it. The end result is you will have an array with 4TB parity, a 4TB data disk that contains the data that your original 2TB data disk had, 2x500GB data disks with nothing on them, and 1x250GB cache disk with nothing on it. If this is not what you had in mind then let us know. Link to comment
truetype Posted November 23, 2015 Author Share Posted November 23, 2015 Hello community! I have borrowed a complete server from a friend for a year, and now I've finally bought myself a own complete system! I want to start over with the new system or move everything there and continue as normal. As my setup looks right now it has 2x 2TB disks. In my new system it has 2x 4TB disks, 1x 250GB SSD as I gonna use as cache and 2x 500GB disks. I have some plugins that I setup on my system and if I can just move everything easy, that would be great. Otherwise I can start over fresh. How do I as simply as possible continue to use my new system? Please explain step by step and I will be most thankful! -Sincerely TrueType Not really enough details to go on here so I will just make some assumptions and we can go from there to make corrections. Old system: 2TB parity + 1x2TB data disk. New system: 4TB parity + 1x4TB data + 2x500GB data + 1x250GB cache. Put your flash drive and the disks from the old system into your new system and boot up and check that everything is working just like it did in your old system. Preclear all of the new disks except the SSD. Replace 2TB parity with 4TB and let parity rebuild. Replace 2TB data with other 4TB and let that data disk rebuild. Add 2x500GB data. Since they are clear parity will still be valid. Let unRAID format them. Add 1x250GB SSD cache. Let unRAID format it. The end result is you will have an array with 4TB parity, a 4TB data disk that contains the data that your original 2TB data disk had, 2x500GB data disks with nothing on them, and 1x250GB cache disk with nothing on it. If this is not what you had in mind then let us know. Thank you very much, this is exactly as what I had in my mind! Just one thing, I don't know what preclearing means or how I can do that. I found just a comment on the wiki that says preclear FAQ is not available yet. Would you please mind helping me out with that and I can get going this evening? - Best regards, TrueType Link to comment
truetype Posted November 23, 2015 Author Share Posted November 23, 2015 Okey thanks! So if I understood you right I do like this. 1. Move USB + the 2x 2TB disks + 1x 4TB disk to my new computer. 2. Start unRAID. 3. Start parity check. 4. Replace one of the two 2TB disks with my 2nd 4TB disk by following these steps http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ#How_do_I_replace_a_hard_disk.3F 5. Then replace the last 2TB disk with one of the 500GB disks or simply shrinking the array by following the steps here http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Shrink_array Am I correct? I don't know how many drive bays you have so I would take all of your drives out of the new system. Move all the drives and flash from the old system to the new one. Boot it up and make sure everything is working. I am running unRaid 6.1.4 and when I add a drive it forces me to preclear the drive, so this is what I would do... Install one of the 4TB drives but do not add it to unRaid yet. 1. Open a console on your server and login as root. Then... 2. cd /boot/ 3. sh preclear_disk.sh /dev/sd? "?" will show on the unRaid MAIN page... This is going to take a looong time... When it is finished add this drive to the array as your parity drive. Add the second 4TB drive to the server and repeat steps 1-3. When this is finished, add this drive to the array. Do this for the remaining drives you will be using in the new array with the exception of your cache drive. I would save that for the last step. You will now have parity, one 4TB drive, two 500GB drives and your two original 2TB drives. Now you can follow the instructions for shrinking the array to take out the two 2TB drives. I would do this one drive at a time, just to be on the safe side. Now I would add your cache drive and if everything went well, everything should be working. Thanks man, this was very nice of you. But I will try out Trurl's advice firstly. Link to comment
trurl Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 Not really enough details to go on here so I will just make some assumptions and we can go from there to make corrections. Old system: 2TB parity + 1x2TB data disk. New system: 4TB parity + 1x4TB data + 2x500GB data + 1x250GB cache. Put your flash drive and the disks from the old system into your new system and boot up and check that everything is working just like it did in your old system. Preclear all of the new disks except the SSD. Replace 2TB parity with 4TB and let parity rebuild. Replace 2TB data with other 4TB and let that data disk rebuild. Add 2x500GB data. Since they are clear parity will still be valid. Let unRAID format them. Add 1x250GB SSD cache. Let unRAID format it. The end result is you will have an array with 4TB parity, a 4TB data disk that contains the data that your original 2TB data disk had, 2x500GB data disks with nothing on them, and 1x250GB cache disk with nothing on it. If this is not what you had in mind then let us know. Thank you very much, this is exactly as what I had in my mind! Just one thing, I don't know what preclearing means or how I can do that. I found just a comment on the wiki that says preclear FAQ is not available yet. Would you please mind helping me out with that and I can get going this evening? - Best regards, TrueType Preclear Plugin. Also see this post from that thread for a faster version of the preclear script with notifications to use with the plugin. Link to comment
truetype Posted November 24, 2015 Author Share Posted November 24, 2015 Not really enough details to go on here so I will just make some assumptions and we can go from there to make corrections. Old system: 2TB parity + 1x2TB data disk. New system: 4TB parity + 1x4TB data + 2x500GB data + 1x250GB cache. Put your flash drive and the disks from the old system into your new system and boot up and check that everything is working just like it did in your old system. Preclear all of the new disks except the SSD. Replace 2TB parity with 4TB and let parity rebuild. Replace 2TB data with other 4TB and let that data disk rebuild. Add 2x500GB data. Since they are clear parity will still be valid. Let unRAID format them. Add 1x250GB SSD cache. Let unRAID format it. The end result is you will have an array with 4TB parity, a 4TB data disk that contains the data that your original 2TB data disk had, 2x500GB data disks with nothing on them, and 1x250GB cache disk with nothing on it. If this is not what you had in mind then let us know. Thank you very much, this is exactly as what I had in my mind! Just one thing, I don't know what preclearing means or how I can do that. I found just a comment on the wiki that says preclear FAQ is not available yet. Would you please mind helping me out with that and I can get going this evening? - Best regards, TrueType Preclear Plugin. Also see this post from that thread for a faster version of the preclear script with notifications to use with the plugin. Thank you very much! Preclearing 3/5 disks now. Though it takes really long time. Have gone 7% on both 4TB disks and they have run for 39 minutes. Still on Pre-Read. Can I skip pre-read somehow? One question, why am I preclearing? What does preclearing do? Does it format the disks? Both my 4TB disks are absolutely new from shop so I wonder if I can skip this for those maybe? And by the way, my drives which now are pre-reading at 126 MB/s are at 41 degrees celsius, do I need to worry? Link to comment
trurl Posted November 24, 2015 Share Posted November 24, 2015 Technically, the only time unRAID requires a clear disk is when adding it to a new slot in a parity array. This is so parity will remain valid. A clear disk is all zeros so has no impact on existing parity. But preclear is also a very good way to test new disks. It is very important that all bits of all disks are good because all disks are required when a disk must be rebuilt. My rule of thumb is 10 hours per TB for preclearing, though that will be somewhat faster for larger drives. Preclearing does not format the drives. unRAID will format the drives when you add them. One thing I like to tell people, to clear up their misconceptions, is that formatting is not the same as clearing a drive, erasing a drive, deleting all files from a drive, or in general preparing a drive for use. What formatting actually is doing is creating an empty filesystem. Formatting actually writes to a drive to create an empty filesystem. This often comes up when they have formatted a drive they intended to rebuild. Formatting is NEVER part of the rebuild process. If the drive temps don't go much higher I wouldn't worry. People often try to tweak their cooling to keep drives below 40 but the specs actually allow for more. Link to comment
itimpi Posted November 24, 2015 Share Posted November 24, 2015 Preclearing 3/5 disks now. Though it takes really long time. Have gone 7% on both 4TB disks and they have run for 39 minutes. Still on Pre-Read. Can I skip pre-read somehow? Yes - prec-learing takes a long time - I would estimate more than a day for 4TB drives. One question, why am I preclearing? What does preclearing do? Does it format the disks? Both my 4TB disks are absolutely new from shop so I wonder if I can skip this for those maybe? Preclearing has several purposes: Carries out a stress test of the drive. New disks have a significant initial failure rate (normally known as infant mortality). If they pass a preclear cycle then this helps reduce the chance of this. Many people prefer to do more than 1 preclear cycle to reduce the chance of early failure even more It sets the disks to a state in which they can be added to an existing parity protected array without invalidating parity. If a disk is not precleared then unRAID will do this itself in such a scenario and take the array offline for hours while doing it. If the disk is precleared then it can be added in seconds. And by the way, my drives which now are pre-reading at 126 MB/s are at 41 degrees celsius, do I need to worry? No. Drives are rated to much higher temperatures than that (typically something around 60-70 degrees C depending on the model). You can also expect the preclear speed to slow down noticeably as you get to the inner tracks on the drive. Link to comment
truetype Posted November 24, 2015 Author Share Posted November 24, 2015 Preclearing 3/5 disks now. Though it takes really long time. Have gone 7% on both 4TB disks and they have run for 39 minutes. Still on Pre-Read. Can I skip pre-read somehow? Yes - prec-learing takes a long time - I would estimate more than a day for 4TB drives. One question, why am I preclearing? What does preclearing do? Does it format the disks? Both my 4TB disks are absolutely new from shop so I wonder if I can skip this for those maybe? Preclearing has several purposes: Carries out a stress test of the drive. New disks have a significant initial failure rate (normally known as infant mortality). If they pass a preclear cycle then this helps reduce the chance of this. Many people prefer to do more than 1 preclear cycle to reduce the chance of early failure even more It sets the disks to a state in which they can be added to an existing parity protected array without invalidating parity. If a disk is not precleared then unRAID will do this itself in such a scenario and take the array offline for hours while doing it. If the disk is precleared then it can be added in seconds. And by the way, my drives which now are pre-reading at 126 MB/s are at 41 degrees celsius, do I need to worry? No. Drives are rated to much higher temperatures than that (typically something around 60-70 degrees C depending on the model). You can also expect the preclear speed to slow down noticeably as you get to the inner tracks on the drive. Technically, the only time unRAID requires a clear disk is when adding it to a new slot in a parity array. This is so parity will remain valid. A clear disk is all zeros so has no impact on existing parity. But preclear is also a very good way to test new disks. It is very important that all bits of all disks are good because all disks are required when a disk must be rebuilt. My rule of thumb is 10 hours per TB for preclearing, though that will be somewhat faster for larger drives. Preclearing does not format the drives. unRAID will format the drives when you add them. One thing I like to tell people, to clear up their misconceptions, is that formatting is not the same as clearing a drive, erasing a drive, deleting all files from a drive, or in general preparing a drive for use. What formatting actually is doing is creating an empty filesystem. Formatting actually writes to a drive to create an empty filesystem. This often comes up when they have formatted a drive they intended to rebuild. Formatting is NEVER part of the rebuild process. If the drive temps don't go much higher I wouldn't worry. People often try to tweak their cooling to keep drives below 40 but the specs actually allow for more. Can I skip pre-reading while preclearing to save time? Wow you guys are absolutely awesome! You should start the Preclearing FAQ right away with my questions, just copy paste your answers! http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ While I got you experts here I want to see the temperature of my CPU, is there any easy way to do this or do I have to follow these steps here? https://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Setting_up_CPU_and_board_temperature_sensing Link to comment
truetype Posted November 30, 2015 Author Share Posted November 30, 2015 Technically, the only time unRAID requires a clear disk is when adding it to a new slot in a parity array. This is so parity will remain valid. A clear disk is all zeros so has no impact on existing parity. But preclear is also a very good way to test new disks. It is very important that all bits of all disks are good because all disks are required when a disk must be rebuilt. My rule of thumb is 10 hours per TB for preclearing, though that will be somewhat faster for larger drives. Preclearing does not format the drives. unRAID will format the drives when you add them. One thing I like to tell people, to clear up their misconceptions, is that formatting is not the same as clearing a drive, erasing a drive, deleting all files from a drive, or in general preparing a drive for use. What formatting actually is doing is creating an empty filesystem. Formatting actually writes to a drive to create an empty filesystem. This often comes up when they have formatted a drive they intended to rebuild. Formatting is NEVER part of the rebuild process. If the drive temps don't go much higher I wouldn't worry. People often try to tweak their cooling to keep drives below 40 but the specs actually allow for more. Thank you, all this worked like a charm!! By the way, my girlfriend has some DVD movies she wants to see. Is there anyway I can insert the DVD into my DVD reader and stream it / play it from there? Sincerely TrueType Link to comment
trurl Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 Thank you, all this worked like a charm!! By the way, my girlfriend has some DVD movies she wants to see. Is there anyway I can insert the DVD into my DVD reader and stream it / play it from there? Sincerely TrueType If you mean a DVD reader on your unRAID server, not without a lot more knowledge and trouble. Link to comment
truetype Posted December 1, 2015 Author Share Posted December 1, 2015 Thank you, all this worked like a charm!! By the way, my girlfriend has some DVD movies she wants to see. Is there anyway I can insert the DVD into my DVD reader and stream it / play it from there? Sincerely TrueType If you mean a DVD reader on your unRAID server, not without a lot more knowledge and trouble. Okey, so there's no idea I even try? Link to comment
trurl Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 Thank you, all this worked like a charm!! By the way, my girlfriend has some DVD movies she wants to see. Is there anyway I can insert the DVD into my DVD reader and stream it / play it from there? Sincerely TrueType If you mean a DVD reader on your unRAID server, not without a lot more knowledge and trouble. Okey, so there's no idea I even try? You would probably need to create a VM and pass it the device, and also pass a video card and play it on an attached monitor. Not sure if anything exists to stream DVDs over the network under any OS. Link to comment
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