December 23, 200916 yr Is it possible to insert new disks while unRAID (v4.5) is online and running (when the HW allows for this of course) and which commands need to be run after insertion in order the newly inserted disk to get recognized by the system and device path shown?
December 23, 200916 yr Is it possible to insert new disks while unRAID (v4.5) is online and running (when the HW allows for this of course) and which commands need to be run after insertion in order the newly inserted disk to get recognized by the system and device path shown? This is more of a linux question then unRAID. Does Slackware 12.2 allow it? (I know it does for pcmcia cards, and for USB devices, but have no idea about hard disks) Basically, the answer to your question is unRAID was not designed to allow you to add or remove hardware while powered on. (other than plugging in and un-plugging USB drives other than the flash drive it boots from, but then, unRAID does not use them either) unRAID does its "device inventory" when it boots. It does not look at any drives you add later, even if your hardware/OS lets you. Worse than that, there has been at least one report of a person plugging in "hot-swap" hardware, the linux kernel re-naming drives because of it, and it clobbering their existing array... You are on your own... experiment, but do it with data stored elsewhere... You will need to stop the array and at a minimum kill and re-start emhttp to get it to see any newly added drives.. To be safe, I'd stop the array when plugging and un-plugging anything. You may need to kick the "udev" process to get it to re-scan the connected drives and to create the required "device" entries.
December 23, 200916 yr Author You are right, this is not very unRAID related. I basically want to INSERT a new disk and start preclearing, etc (which takes a lot of time) WITHOUT powering down and up the unRAID server for the simple disk insertion. When the disk is ready and I decide later on to move it to the unRAID array I will stop, add and start the array of course. I am a Solaris guy, so sorry for asking this simple question, but I see it is better I stop/restart unRAID just to be safe with my other data disks.
December 23, 200916 yr You are right, this is not very unRAID related. I basically want to INSERT a new disk and start preclearing, etc (which takes a lot of time) WITHOUT powering down and up the unRAID server for the simple disk insertion. When the disk is ready and I decide later on to move it to the unRAID array I will stop, add and start the array of course. I am a Solaris guy, so sorry for asking this simple question, but I see it is better I stop/restart unRAID just to be safe with my other data disks. I understand... I'd at a minimum stop the array, plug in the new drive, and then re-start the array. Then do the pre-clear if the disk shows itself in the hardware. Joe L.
December 23, 200916 yr Author Understood. I will insert the new disks when I get the chance the powerdown/up the whole server. This isn't very critical and I'd rather make sure I don't mess up with the data. Thanks again, Joe!
December 23, 200916 yr Understood. I will insert the new disks when I get the chance the powerdown/up the whole server. This isn't very critical and I'd rather make sure I don't mess up with the data. Thanks again, Joe! Just so you know, you can load a spare flash drive with unRAID, plug it into a spare PC, boot it, use it to pre-clear the disk. There is no need to have any disks assigned to the array, so the second PC just needs to have a spare SATA port and be able to boot from the flash drive. You don't even need to remove the OS on the second PC since most will let you choose an alternate boot device at boot time if you press a function key at the right time. As long as you do not assign any drives, and as long as you do not choose the boot disk to clear, unRAID will not write to the original PC boot disk. Joe L.
December 23, 200916 yr Author Joe, that's cool and I already use it that way to preclear disks, two at a time :-) It was just a thought as the other PC gets heavily used for other tasks and on the other hand my Norco has direct hotplug carriers on the front running unRAID all the time, and as I am used to just hot plug/unplug/cfgadm disks in a Solaris box I thought this would be possible with Slackware/unRAID too..
December 24, 200916 yr I have an external e-sata dock connected to my server and I have succesfully hot plugged a drive and it shows up in disk management of unmenu...
December 26, 200916 yr Author Jim, is the external eSata dock connected via USB or direct eSata to the unRAID server?
April 9, 201016 yr You are right, this is not very unRAID related. I basically want to INSERT a new disk and start preclearing, etc (which takes a lot of time) WITHOUT powering down and up the unRAID server for the simple disk insertion. When the disk is ready and I decide later on to move it to the unRAID array I will stop, add and start the array of course. I am a Solaris guy, so sorry for asking this simple question, but I see it is better I stop/restart unRAID just to be safe with my other data disks. I know this is a bit old now but I just wanted to chime in with my successes doing this over the past couple of weeks. I have read of problems with some motherboards resetting when a SATA drive was plugged into the power supply, and others resetting when plugged into the data line - so, your mileage may vary. But, with my setups running the Supermicro 5-bay SATA swap enclosures on an Asus P5GD1 and an MSI MS-7536 I have experienced no issues hot-plugging SATA drives while the array is online, even copying files. Using unmenu I can mount and unmount the newly-inserted media at will and start copying files or preclearing, etc.
April 13, 201016 yr I raised this as a question in an earelier thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5692.msg53397#msg53397 Interesting read, I raised this to see if this could be a native feature which would/could be introduced into unraid's OS. It seems to be both OS and hardware dependent, which unraid does not support.
April 14, 201016 yr mvsata driver supports hotswap (on my 88sx based pcie card), so youd have to stop array, kill emhttp, change disks, restart emhttp, restart array with new disks detected
April 14, 201016 yr Oh OK terrastrife, well unoffically supported then (Pending hardware support of course). It would be good if unraid could detect this given you have the hardware to support it to allow you to do hot swapping via the web gui, making it as simple as possible, but dabbing into the cli for most would do no harm I guess. For the masses of unraid users who don't have the hardware to support, you'd have to power off the unraid rig, slot in the disk(s), power on, and away you go. Thanks. mvsata driver supports hotswap (on my 88sx based pcie card), so youd have to stop array, kill emhttp, change disks, restart emhttp, restart array with new disks detected
April 14, 201016 yr i think theres too many drive rissues really. i run the amd, sasmv, mvsata and jmb drivers and only the mvsata one actually supports hotswap.
April 14, 201016 yr Joe, can a drive be plugged in using usb and run the preclear on it? Yes, it will run slower than if connected directly, but it will run.
April 14, 201016 yr Joe, can a drive be plugged in using usb and run the preclear on it? Yes, it will run slower than if connected directly, but it will run. Now that is convenient. I'm getting a new drive in a day or so. I'll load it using usb and do several days of burn in BEFORE going to the trouble of slotting it in the server.
April 14, 201016 yr The newer USB3 would speed things up albeit, you would only have to have a quick nap then . That will take some long time over USB :-) I'll sleep right though it.
April 14, 201016 yr Joe, can a drive be plugged in using usb and run the preclear on it? Yes, I have done it and it works. It is slower and you will be lucky to get smart reports from it though. It really depends on the USB chipset that is being used but on my setup it does not allow for smart reports.
April 14, 201016 yr Ok, what about eSata? Does slackware support hot plugging eSata? That depends mostly on your hardware.
April 14, 201016 yr sleep through it? a 2TB hdd takes 24 hours at full 100MB/sec, over USB that will take at least 4 times longer
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