March 4, 201016 yr Hello forum friends, Long time noob, first time poster. Going from just getting my feet wet with media streaming/media servers less than a year ago, I sort of took to it and now I have a dilemma. I guess I was thinking "too small" from the get-go and simply built an htpc/sever for my media. I just kept adding drives and ended up with the following: Five 2TB drives for movies (generally high bitrate MKVs and some bluray ISOs) (60% full on average) One 1.5TB drive for documentaries and such (75% full) One 1.5TB drive for television shows (75% full) ……and no backup or RAID of any kind for data security. It wasn't a real consideration for me when I started, but now it is something I keep thinking about. I have decided to spend some more money on this project and was wondering if folks had some suggestions on how I should proceed. Dumb Questions: 1) If I get the rb-1200 or the MD-1510, can I just stick my existing seven drives in it and then learn and start using unraid to solve my redundancy issue? Does unraid work with existing data on drives? 2) If one of my drives is partitioned and contains my windows operating system and some applications, will I be able to run windows and those programs after that drive is installed in the limetech server? I assume so since they appear to be full fledged computers. 3) I currently have a SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card and not sure if it will work under unraid - I assume that I will need another SATA controller card for using more than 8 drives (using the two 4 port cards in the limetech server fpr the first 8 drives) Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
March 4, 201016 yr Hello forum friends, Long time noob, first time poster. Going from just getting my feet wet with media streaming/media servers less than a year ago, I sort of took to it and now I have a dilemma. I guess I was thinking "too small" from the get-go and simply built an htpc/sever for my media. I just kept adding drives and ended up with the following: Five 2TB drives for movies (generally high bitrate MKVs and some bluray ISOs) (60% full on average) One 1.5TB drive for documentaries and such (75% full) One 1.5TB drive for television shows (75% full) ……and no backup or RAID of any kind for data security. It wasn't a real consideration for me when I started, but now it is something I keep thinking about. I have decided to spend some more money on this project and was wondering if folks had some suggestions on how I should proceed. Dumb Questions: 1) If I get the rb-1200 or the MD-1510, can I just stick my existing seven drives in it and then learn and start using unraid to solve my redundancy issue? That would be one solution. Does unraid work with existing data on drives? UnRAID uses the reiserfs file-system You would need to migrate the data from your existing drives to ones formatted in the unRAID server. unRAID can mount and read from your existing NTFS disks, so you can set up an initial pair of drives (one data, one parity) then copy from one of your existing drives to the unRAID data drive. Then, once that NTFS drive is safely copied, you can install it in the unRAID server as an additional data drive, then fill it from other of your NTFS drives, etc. 2) If one of my drives is partitioned and contains my windows operating system and some applications, will I be able to run windows and those programs after that drive is installed in the limetech server? I assume so since they appear to be full fledged computers. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks. The windows OS will be unused. Some applications might be usable invoked remotely from a network share, but odds are they to will need to stay in your windows PC since they were installed there and not installed on a network share. So, basically, no... the windows OS will not be used. The windows programs not usable.
March 5, 201016 yr Here is the way I migrate from a Windows server to unRAID: 1- Buy TWO new hard drive.. as big or larger than the larges one you already have in the existing server. 2. Set up unRAID with those 2 new drives to start the array. 3. Install ONE of the drives from the Windows box to the unRAID box, but do NOT add it to the array. 4. Mount the Windows drive in the unRAID box, and copy all the files from that windows drive, to the drive in the array. 5. After you have copied (and verified!) all the files from the Windows disk have been copied safely, add that Windows drive to the array. Note this will DELETE ALL DATA from that Windows drive. 6. Repeat steps 3 through 5 for each of the Window's drives. When done, all of the old drives will be added to the unRAID server in the array.
March 5, 201016 yr Here is the way I migrate from a Windows server to unRAID: 1- Buy TWO new hard drive.. as big or larger than the larges one you already have in the existing server. 2. Set up unRAID with those 2 new drives to start the array. 3. Install ONE of the drives from the Windows box to the unRAID box, but do NOT add it to the array. 4. Mount the Windows drive in the unRAID box, and copy all the files from that windows drive, to the drive in the array. 5. After you have copied (and verified!) all the files from the Windows disk have been copied safely, add that Windows drive to the array. Note this will DELETE ALL DATA from that Windows drive. 6. Repeat steps 3 through 5 for each of the Window's drives. When done, all of the old drives will be added to the unRAID server in the array. I am getting ready to do something similar with a slight twist to it. I currently have 8 250GB drives set up in a hardware raid 5 array using a raid PCI card under windows XP. I currently have around 1 TB of data on this array. I had planned to buy three 2 TB drives (I have 2 and just waiting for a good price for a 3rd one) and do the following: 1. In windows copy the 1TB of data from the 8 drive raid 5 array to 1 of the new 2TB drives. 2. Create a 2 drive unraid with the other two 2 TB drives. 3. Add the 2 TB drive from step two to the box, but not as part of the unraid array. 4. Follow steps 4 and 5 of your process above. Is this the best way to migrate to an unraid server? thanks, Murray
March 5, 201016 yr Since you would be copying 1 TB twice, you may get to the end faster by just copy directly over the LAN from the RAID5 array to unRAID.
March 5, 201016 yr Since you would be copying 1 TB twice, you may get to the end faster by just copy directly over the LAN from the RAID5 array to unRAID. I am going to be re-using the same computer for the unraid array that my current raid 5 is on, so there won't be two separate computers on the lan.
March 5, 201016 yr ...I had planned to buy three 2 TB drives (I have 2 and just waiting for a good price for a 3rd one) and do the following: with bing shopping cash back this comes out to $135 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5265070&CatId=4357
March 5, 201016 yr ...I had planned to buy three 2 TB drives (I have 2 and just waiting for a good price for a 3rd one) and do the following: with bing shopping cash back this comes out to $135 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5265070&CatId=4357 I have already violated the "don't buy all the same brand of drives at the same time" rule. The 2 that I have right now are Hitachi's. I was planning to get another brand for my 3rd one.
March 19, 201016 yr Can someone help me or point me in the right direction? I installed a data containing drive into an emty sata, I did not add it to the array. Next thing would be to mount it and copy the data into the existing unRAID but I don't know how ... It's 1TB WD (eavs I think - am not at home right know), Mac formatted - is the hfs+ the reason why I can't mount it?
March 19, 201016 yr - is the hfs+ the reason why I can't mount it? I suspect the hfsplus driver is not in unRAID.... but you can try mount -t hfsplus [device]
March 19, 201016 yr - is the hfs+ the reason why I can't mount it? You can try installing the hfsutils package. It's a collection of tools for reading and writing Macintosh HFS volumes. It has a 'hmount' command. ftp://slackware.osuosl.org/pub/slackware/slackware-current/slackware/tcl/hfsutils-3.2.6-i486-4.txz I am not sure, but hfsutils may require that you also install the tcl package (found at the same location)
March 20, 201016 yr Hey - I finally made it. I'm not really good at this but I figured some of it out in the end by reading this thread. hfsplus is part of unRaid - probably since 2.6.24.5 sometime after May 2008 ... I will post my (successful) example in that thread ... thx a bunch for pointing me the right way!
March 20, 201016 yr - is the hfs+ the reason why I can't mount it? I suspect the hfsplus driver is not in unRAID.... but you can try mount -t hfsplus [device] I looked, it is. You might have to load it with modprobe, but it is in 4.5.3 (and probably earlier, I've just never looked).
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