Question for future move

[Thejack59]

Hello everyone,
I have a question for my future NAS.

I will buy a complete new system base on Ryzen (with 1 Drive 8TB), and I would like to know if my plan can be done.

 

1. Build the Ryzen System without parity drive
2. Transfert all my data (arround 7TB)
3. Format all my old drives (basicaly 4x3TB WD Red Drive) and put the synology into retirement
4. Put then into the Ryzen build
5. Configure unraid to use the 8TB drive for single parity and 4x3TB drive for storage

 

And the big question is about the last point, can it be done ?

Thanks for your help

 

PS : English is not my native language, sorry if I made mistakes

 

Jack

[Zonediver]

FYI: The Parity-Drive must always be as big is the biggest drive on the array, "OR" bigger - and yes, parity can be added later as well.

If you have - let's say - 2x 8TB then you can deside which is the parity - but it must be one of these two.

FYI2: Parity is optional - nice to have but no need - but beware: Array is unprotected against errors!!!

Edited May 10, 2017 by Zonediver

[burtjr]

1. I would look at the Ryzen thread here

as there are some early adoption problems that folks are working around.

 

2. You don't mention how you will be transferring your data. Will you be moving it to the 8TB drive and back to the 4 3TB, once in the system? or transfer all 7 TB to 3 of the 3TB drives, install the 4th into the new server and transfer 3TB to that drive and add each additional drive?

 

and yes it can be done.

[phbigred]

42 minutes ago, burtjr said:

1. I would look at the Ryzen thread here

as there are some early adoption problems that folks are working around.

 

2. You don't mention how you will be transferring your data. Will you be moving it to the 8TB drive and back to the 4 3TB, once in the system? or transfer all 7 TB to 3 of the 3TB drives, install the 4th into the new server and transfer 3TB to that drive and add each additional drive?

 

and yes it can be done.

Yup my Ryzen test bench is doing essentially what you are. Planning to move my prod disks over in about 2 weeks after I beat on my box some more for VM performance tweaking. Just running a single drive (in my case a m.2 nvme but it's listed as a data drive for testing.) Big thing follow what the things like turning off C6 state & immediately update your bios and it should be pretty straightforward.

Edited May 10, 2017 by phbigred

[Thejack59]

Thanks for all the anwsers.

So to clarify just a bit @Zonediver , i have for now an old synology NAS with 4x3TB drive.

 

My plan was to move the data from the Synology to the Ryzen build (which will have a single 8TB drive, for data. So no parity drive)

And After, format the 4x3TB drive, put then into the Ryzen build.

When tha't done, I want to change the 8TB to be the parity drive intead of data drive. And set the 4x3TB drives to be data drive.

 

I don't now if it's more clear

 

@burtjr

Thank's for your reply and yes I already follow this thread and I'm sur all of the problem will be corrected when I want to move (maybe in 6 months or so ...)

Jack

[Zonediver]

If this is your "only" 8TB Drive and you like to use it as parity, you must copy over "all" Data from that drive to the 4x 3TB drives.

If you dont do this, you cant use it as parity because it contains your data.

It cant hold data "and" work as parity at the same time

 

Edited May 10, 2017 by Zonediver

[tdallen]

16 minutes ago, Thejack59 said:

My plan was to move the data from the Synology to the Ryzen build (which will have a single 8TB drive, for data. So no parity drive)

And After, format the 4x3TB drive, put then into the Ryzen build.

When tha't done, I want to change the 8TB to be the parity drive intead of data drive. And set the 4x3TB drives to be data drive

You can do this, but there's a downside.  You can easily setup your Ryzen build with a single 8TB data drive and copy all the data from the Synology to it.  But, as you begin adding the 3TB drives to unRAID they will be wiped clean and formatted.  During this period of time you will have only one copy of your data (on the 8TB drive) and it won't be protected by parity.  After the 3TB drives are added you would then copy the data back to the 3TB drives.  Finally, you'd setup the 8TB as parity.

 

Bottom line - you want a good backup strategy so that you know your data is safe while you are doing all this work.

[Thejack59]

Thanks for your anwser @Zonediver and @tdallen.

 

@tdallen yes this is exactly what I want to do, so it's possible but with not backup during this operation. This is probably ok, since I can copy all the important data to USB drive (maybe 2TB of data).

 

Thank's everybody for your support !