My UNRAID 6 USB failed, I have replaced with clean install and new USB - but 'Identify' does not do anything. It can see the drives, but how do I get it to reassign their functions, parity / cache / data?

My UNRAID 6 USB failed, I have replaced with clean install and new USB - but 'Identify' does not do anything. It can see the drives, but how do I get it to reassign their functions, parity / cache / data?

Hopefully you have some record of what the setup was on the previous USB drive?  You have to reassign drives just like on a new setup.  unRAID can recognise drives that were previously used by unRAID and will leave their data intact when the array is started.    Just make sure that you do not assign a data drive as parity - that would destroy its contents.  All top level folders on the drives will automatically be created as User shares with default settings.

 

If you had a backup of the previous USB drive then it I possible to restore configuration files to bypass some of these steps.

 

Because it is a new USB drive you will need a new license file as the license is tied to the GUID of a particular USB drive.    If you put the old license file in the 'config' folder on the new USB drive then you will be taken through the automated process for transferring the license to this drive when starting the system (if that fails for any reason then contact Limetech by email).

Worst case, you can probably try to mount the drives in another computer (it should even work on a laptop with a sata to usb adapter) so you can peek into the contents and identify the parity drive and the cache. The numbers or the order of the data drives should not matter. Just make sure you put the parity and the cache in the right spots.

Worst case, you can probably try to mount the drives in another computer (it should even work on a laptop with a sata to usb adapter) so you can peek into the contents and identify the parity drive and the cache. The numbers or the order of the data drives should not matter. Just make sure you put the parity and the cache in the right spots.

That would work if you mounted them in a computer running an OS that could actually read the filesystems used by unRAID. A Windows computer will not be able to natively read any of your unRAID disks. Whatever you do don't let another computer alter the disks in any way.

 

The usual advice if you don't know which drive is parity is to not assign a parity drive at all. Instead, assign them all as data drives. After you have done that, there should be only one drive that shows as unmountable or unformatted, and that will be the parity drive. Then you can start over knowing which drive is parity and assign it to the parity slot.

 

If more than one drive shows as unmountable or unformatted then one of those is parity and the other(s) have filesystem corruption and you have more work to do.

 

Thanks I will assign them all as data - and go from there.

 

Thanks again.