Another stupid question - when doing a new config, I assume I can just allocate drives to whatever disk number I want?  (so long as I'm clear on what is a parity drive and what is a data drive).

That is true while you only have a single parity drive.    The order of data drives becomes significant when you add the second parity drive.

Another stupid question - when doing a new config, I assume I can just allocate drives to whatever disk number I want?  (so long as I'm clear on what is a parity drive and what is a data drive).

That is true while you only have a single parity drive.    The order of data drives becomes significant when you add the second parity drive.

 

Like to add that unRAID 6.2 and higher supports a "retain device" feature which allows the user to preset slots after a new config is done. E.g. keep the parity device but leave data devices open for new assignment.

Great responses

 

Still trying to get my head around the file system change.  Logically I need to add a 4th x 6TB drive to make the conversion process fast.

 

My useable array right now is 34.5TB, with all drives almost completely full.

 

I figure with dual parity and one 6TB drive as data, my total array is going to be around 36.3TB.  If I replace a further 2TB data drive with another 6TB (2 x 6TB parity, 2 x 6TB data, having lost 3 x 2TB data drives), that should give me around 41.7TB.  Once I'm there, it should be quite easy to move data from multiple old drives, in order to re-format them.

 

It's adding yet more expense mind you...not sure if it's worth it?  (I'm assuming there's no issue with the file systems being different across drives?)

Just to be very clear on drive assignments => as you already noted, you can assign drives in any way you want when you do a New Config; BUT if you have dual parity AND are going to check the "parity is already valid" box (NOT the case here), then the order is important.  With single parity the order doesn't matter (but of course you have to assign the correct parity disk and parity does really have to be valid if you're going to check that box -- again NOT the case here.

 

As for your next steps ...

 

So I stop the array, shutdown, remove my parity drive and any 2 data drives, reboot and then immediately go to "New config", then setup the array again? (effectively allocating drives from scratch).  I'm assuming I need to setup everything including shares again?

 

Yes, that's basically it.  The shares will still be there, as long as shares are enabled [Any top-level folder is automatically a share].    So you simply stop the array; remove the parity drive and 2 data drives; install your 6TB drives [as I noted earlier, you could just install 2 6TB drives (one parity and a data drive) if you want to get started on this today -- adding the 2nd parity drive later won't have any impact (except the time to compute the 2nd parity)];  and then do a New Config, assigning the 6TB parity drive(s), the 6TB data drive, and all of your remaining 2TB data drives.    Then you Start the array and wait for the parity sync -- and after that you do a parity check to confirm all went well.

 

When that's done, your array will be ready, and will have an empty 6TB data drive in XFS format.

 

 

What are the advantages of moving to the XFS file system?  (it sounds like a lot of work).

 

A few thoughts r.e. file system conversion ...

 

(a)  As noted earlier, Reiser disks can have very slow write performance when they're very full [The actual writes aren't slow; but the time the system spends "thinking" (i.e. determining where to actually write the data) can be pretty long].  READ performance isn't impacted at all ... so on essentially static Reiser disks there's really no compelling reason to change them to XFS.

 

(b)  As also noted abover, IF you ever get a file corruption problem, the Reiserfsck tool is VERY good at recovering data -- it's done "magic" for a lot of situations where it certainly seemed like the data was gone for good.    The recovery tools for XFS are clearly NOT as good.

 

©  For WRITES, XFS-formatted disks clearly outperform Reiser, since the peformance doesn't degrade as the disks get full.

 

What I would probably do in your situation ...

 

=>  Since most of your disks are very nearly full, it seems they can be considered essentially "static" -- so you'll likely have very few writes to any of the older disks as you move towards growing the array.  So there's no real rush to convert the file systems on those disks.    I WOULD, however, use XFS for the new 6TB data drives as you upgrade the drive sizes.

 

=>  You can't upgrade a data drive's size AND change the file system by simply doing a rebuild with the new, larger disk => the file system when you do a rebuild will be the same as what was originally used.  Nor can you change the file system type non-destructively (i.e. when you change the file system, the drive will be reformatted and ALL data will be lost.

 

=>  So basically what I'd suggest is that you start off with a 6TB data drive that's XFS, and since it will have over 2TB of free space (after you've copied the data from the two 2TB drives that you took out of the system to it), virtually all of your new writes are going to go to this drive.

 

=>  At your leisure, you could convert ONE drive at a time to XFS.  The SAFEST (but not the fastest) way to do this is to copy ALL of the data off of a drive to another location NOT on the array (thus completing avoiding any possibility of accidentally encoutering the "user share copy bug") -- i.e. to a drive on your main PC.  Be sure you have confidence in the copy [i.e. validate it by comparing the copied files to the originals, or use a copy utility that validates the copies (e.g. TeraCopy).  Then Stop the array and change the file type for that drive to XFS => be CAREFUL and be CERTAIN you're doing this to the right drive, as when you then Start the array it's going to format that drive and thus erase everything that was on it.    THEN you can simply copy all of the data back to the same drive -- and it will be in XFS format.    Note that you could then rebuild that drive onto a new, larger drive (e.g. 6TB) and it would retain the XFS format ... and add 4TB of additional capacity to your system.

 

This slow-but steady conversion will, of course, take a couple days/drive to do .. but there's really no rush at all in the process.

 

If you don't want to copy data off the array and back to it, you could, as your upgrade a drive to 6TB, easily copy a couple of drives worth of data to the new drive and then convert those drives to XFS ... but if you do this (using Linux copy tools), be CERTAIN you understand how to avoid the "user share copy bug", as if you do it wrong you'll lose ALL of the data you just "copied".  It's not hard to avoid that bug, but I've seen a LOT of folks on this forum who thought they understood it and still lost data.    That's why I'd simply copy data to another location and back -- it completely avoids the likelihood of that issue.  The only thing it requires is that you have enough space elsewhere to hold a full drive's worth of data ... so you'll need a couple TB of free space on your PC.    Note that if you're planning to upgrade a drive from 2TB to 6TB, you could initially add the 6TB drive to your PC; then use it to copy the data from the Reiser-formatted 2TB drive to;  then reformat the 2TB drive to XFS; then copy the data back to it; and then replace it with the 6TB drive and do a rebuild 

 

 

 

Just a thought; if I have data on one of my drives that I want to change, wouldn't it make sense to remove the drive from the array (assuming the server is shut down), plug it into my main PC, copy all the files across (as that should be quite a rapid file transfer time), then plug the drive back into the server and format?  Or am I overcomplicating things?

 

Still trying to get my head around the user share copy bug...

Just a thought; if I have data on one of my drives that I want to change, wouldn't it make sense to remove the drive from the array (assuming the server is shut down), plug it into my main PC, copy all the files across (as that should be quite a rapid file transfer time), then plug the drive back into the server and format?  Or am I overcomplicating things?

 

Still trying to get my head around the user share copy bug...

Unless your PC is running linux it will not be able to read the disk without additional complications.

 

When you say copy all the files across, if you mean copy it over the network to your server, then after removing the drive you will have to rebuild parity before you can even begin to copy.

Just a thought; if I have data on one of my drives that I want to change, wouldn't it make sense to remove the drive from the array (assuming the server is shut down), plug it into my main PC, copy all the files across (as that should be quite a rapid file transfer time), then plug the drive back into the server and format?  Or am I overcomplicating things?

 

Still trying to get my head around the user share copy bug...

 

If you remove the drive from your server, you'd just lost your parity protection -- NOT something you really want to do.    The process I outlined never removes parity protection from your array.

 

Thanks to your help and advice my server is back up and running, on the latest version   I've now got 4 x 6TB disks in the array, one of the new ones is clearing and once that's done and I've run another parity check on the whole array, I'll add the second parity drive.

 

The only thing I'm left struggling with is transferring files from disks that I've removed from the array.  Using the linux reader software, it won't show the network share as an option for the recovery destination.  I did one small folder and then Tower disappeared from network places!  Tried all the usual tricks but it's not having it!

 

Think I need to reboot the server but can't do it for another 12 hours, hopefully Tower will then show!

When you reboot and can see the server again, be sure you have shares enabled -- and you may want to enable "disk shares" as well, so you can "see" the individual disks [i presume you want to copy the data from the removed disks to one of the 6TB disks].

 

Disk shares are enabled at:  Settings - Global Share Settings - Enable disk shares

 

Odd...disk shares aren't enabled but user shares are, but earlier I could still see Tower under "network" in windows -  it's only just disappeared.  Although I'm pretty sure this is a windows 10 issue rather than unraid...

It may be ... but I haven't seen any issues accessing through Windows 10 since the early technology previews.    Are your Windows 10 systems running the latest version [built 1607 "Anniversay Update"] ??