Looking to move to completely new hardware (from HP N54L to a Gen8 Microserver with all new drives) and starting fresh with the new UnRaid v6.2.  How can I keep my old machine up (N54L w/ UnRaid v5.0 Plus) after moving over the flash drive w/ licensing key in order to copy all of the data over?

 

I assume that I can't just start the whole thing fresh on a new flash drive and then copy the license key over, correct?

 

 

Thanks for any knowledge that you can provide.

Your license is tied to the GUID of the flash drive.  Setting up one or the other machine with a trial license might do the trick for your transition, or using unAssigned Devices to bring over the physical drives for copying if you have a spare bay and SATA connector.

So, if I am reading this right, I can backup the key file, wipe the flash drive and setup an entirely new install v6.2 (30 day trial) Once complete I can copy the key file over to register it.

I may have confused the issue with the trial reference.

 

You can backup your .key file, wipe the flash drive, reinstall unRAID on the flash drive and re-apply the .key file in order to get a completely clean, licensed unRAID install.  If you used a different flash drive you'd need to go to the LimeTech website to migrate the .key file to the GUID of the new flash drive.

 

In order to copy the data from your old server to your new server you could consider configuring a 30 day trial license on a new flash drive so you have two flash drives and two working copies of unRAID (for a limited period).

 

 

Thanks for the reply.  Would I only need to know the order that the original drives were created (sda1, sda2, etc) when moving them to the temp install?

 

Example: move original flash w/ registered GUID to the new setup (new hardware, new drives) and wipe flash, install v 6.2

 

place new flash drive (trial) into old hardware (drives) and make sure that I reassign drives correctly.

 

Copy data over from old drives before trial expires.

 

 

Does this sound like the correct process?

While you could start off by immediately moving the license to the new hardware I don't think I would do that.  It's a little more work but I like the idea of standing up and burning in the new server with the trial license and switching over when you're sure it's running unRAID well.  So,  I would:

• Prepare a new USB stick with the unRAID 6 trial.
  
• Stand up the new server with the new stick and trial license.  Run memtest, pre-clear drives, setup the array, etc. on the new server.
  
• Once things look good on the new server, copy the data from your unRAID 5 server to your new unRAID 6 server with all new disks.
  
• Now swap the USB sticks around.  Backup both the old and new USB drives, especially the .key file on the old drive.
  
• Reformat the old USB stick and copy back the contents of the new one to it so the old stick now has the unRAID 6 files.
  
• Run makebootable on the old stick .
  
• Copy the .key file back to the old USB drive.
  
• Boot the new server with the old USB drive (which now contains an unRAID 6 installation and the original .key file).
  

By the way - consider buying another license and keeping that old server running as part of your backup strategy, if you don't have a solid plan in place already.  That would also let you avoid shifting the USB stick to the new server.

Thank you for the tips tdallen.  I might end up just registering a new license and keeping the older server up, as you mentioned.