February 16, 20179 yr Hey Everyone! I'm getting ready to order some new drives and convert to XFS (MacOS w/ SMB + RFS = Borked Mover ) and I could use some advice. I'm reading the topics and guides about conversion but I have a couple questions on the correct sequence. I currently have 5 2TB drives (including Parity) with a total of 5TB worth of data and I'm planning on upgrading to Seagate Ironwolf 6TB drives. I still have 1 open SATA port (SATA II :'() so I assume I can add it to the storage pool and use MC (or similar) to move the files after formatted to XFS 1. I'm running 6.3.1 so this is my guide http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/File_System_Conversion 2. Do I replace the parity drive first? 3. To get started how many drives should I buy? I was thinking 2 (1 for Parity, 1 for Data) 4. Should I just bite the bullet and buy 3 drives so I can do dual Parity? 5. Should I move all 5TB worth of Data onto the new 6TB Drive or just replace one 2TB drive at a time? My thought is if I move all the Data to the new drive then I can go back and reformat the older drives to XFS and hopefully get a working Mover again! 6. Any words of advice, hard lessons learned, or oh crap moments you want to share? Thanks All!
February 16, 20179 yr I just went through this with 5 - 3tb drives. I had just enough space to move data off of drive3 onto another drive without having to upgrade to 1 bigger drive or adding a drive. round [source] [dest] ------- ----------- -------- 1 disk3 disk4 Disk3 is new XFS disk 2 disk1 disk3 Disk1 is new XFS disk 3 disk2 disk1 Disk2 is new XFS disk 4 disk4 disk2 Disk4 is new XFS disk In progress.....Move Disk3 files from step one to empty disk4 Still need to do... Verify shares and excluded disks - don't think I set any up. Look at backup cron jobs and change where those point to. Power back up Plex docker make sure everything looks right. Change location for music in LMS. 2. Do I replace the parity drive first? Yes if you add the other 6tb drive as data. Also run parity check with new disk. 3. To get started how many drives should I buy? I was thinking 2 (1 for Parity, 1 for Data) That would be a good starting point 5. Should I move all 5TB worth of Data onto the new 6TB Drive or just replace one 2TB drive at a time? My thought is if I move all the Data to the new drive then I can go back and reformat the older drives to XFS and hopefully get a working Mover again! You could but you may want to do it like below when you move the files. rsync -avPX /mnt/disk1/ /mnt/disk6/disk1_RFS rsync -avPX /mnt/disk2/ /mnt/disk6/disk2_RFS rsync -avPX /mnt/disk3/ /mnt/disk6/disk3_RFS rsync -avPX /mnt/disk4/ /mnt/disk6/disk4_RFS That way you can move that back to the drives they were on. rsync -avPX /mnt/disk6/disk1_RFS/ /mnt/disk1 to move data back to disk1 after formatted to XFS. 6. Any words of advice, hard lessons learned, or oh crap moments you want to share? Make notes of your current system. Take screen shots if needed. Make a cheat sheet of your steps so you don't miss one.
February 17, 20179 yr Yours is a special situation, so I'm going to offer an alternative method. Since you want to replace the parity drive, you are going to have to rebuild parity at some point. And even if you try to preserve parity, it sounds like you may be removing one or more 2TB data drives, which also may mean rebuilding parity. Since you can set the parity drive aside, and don't even have to overwrite the current 2TB data drives, you are safe to operate the conversion without parity. (If something goes wrong, you still have the old data drives and the old parity drive.) So here's my suggested steps: - Make careful notes of drives and serial numbers (just in case) - From the Tools tab, run New Config, with Retain nothing or Retain Cache drive only - Assign nothing to the parity drive - Assign one of the new 6TB drives to Disk 1 - Assign all of the 2TB data drives to Disk 2 through 4 - Start the array - Copy all of the data from the current data drives to Disk 1 - Verify it looks good - Run New Config again, and this time assign the drives the way you want them for the future, with none, some, or all of the 2TB drives - Assign the other new 6TB drive as the Parity drive - Start the array and let it build parity
February 17, 20179 yr Yours is a special situation, so I'm going to offer an alternative method. Since you want to replace the parity drive, you are going to have to rebuild parity at some point. And even if you try to preserve parity, it sounds like you may be removing one or more 2TB data drives, which also may mean rebuilding parity. Since you can set the parity drive aside, and don't even have to overwrite the current 2TB data drives, you are safe to operate the conversion without parity. (If something goes wrong, you still have the old data drives and the old parity drive.) So here's my suggested steps: - Make careful notes of drives and serial numbers (just in case) - From the Tools tab, run New Config, with Retain nothing or Retain Cache drive only - Assign nothing to the parity drive - Assign one of the new 6TB drives to Disk 1 - Assign all of the 2TB data drives to Disk 2 through 4 - Start the array - Copy all of the data from the current data drives to Disk 1 - Verify it looks good - Run New Config again, and this time assign the drives the way you want them for the future, with none, some, or all of the 2TB drives - Assign the other new 6TB drive as the Parity drive - Start the array and let it build parity +1 This is by far the quickest way to get your specific migration done. Just a couple notes with additions and verification steps I'd do to keep you safe. Most all this is implied in Rob's outline, but I wanted to call out some specific checks for your punchlist. Before you start the array with only data drives, I'd click on each drive and verify that the desired file format type is exactly what you want, i.e. data1 being the new 6TB is XFS, data2 and up specifically set to ReiserFS instead of auto. Make SURE only the single new drive shows as unformatted and all your other drives show your files before you check the box to format all unmountable disks. After the copy step, where Rob says verify it looks good, I'd like to add a step depending on your final intent. If you are planning on repurposing or selling your existing 2TB drives, I'd highly advise keeping them for backup purposes instead. If you don't keep them as backup, I'd do the rsync commands again with the verification turned on. It will take a long time, but the extra piece of mind that all your data made it intact is worth it in my mind. There is NO situation where I'd recommend moving the data instead of copying it. Moving is MUCH slower, since ReiserFS deletion of files is very time consuming, and you lose the ability to backtrack if something goes wrong. In the same vein as my last point, I'd like to advise NOT using any of your existing 2TB drives in the new array. IMHO they are much more valuable to you as backup media. In the future, any time you add a blank drive to the array, I'd make it a point to verify the desired format type for that drive slot.
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.