drives that become... "mobile"...

[tmp31416]

gents, hopefully this should be quick and easy:

 

it turns out one of my (syba) sil3132 sata cards was kaput when i put it in my unraid box.  since it was the last scanned during the post, i thought nothing of it when connecting some hard drives to the two other cards since they were scanned before the defective unit.

 

imagine my astonishment when i replaced the faulty card with the new one, booted my server, only to discover that the drives attached to the first two cards scanned had been shuffled around! (*)  so i turned off the server, removed the new card, rebooted: big sigh of relief, the drives were again where they were/are supposed to be.

 

if i put back the good card in, can just go to the devices menu page, locate the concerned drives by their s/n, re-assign them to their proper place (drive 6 & drive 8 ) and simply start the array without having to do anything else?  that would be just grand.

 

of course, i will back up whatever small amount of data there is on these drives to a new 1tb drive i just put in before i do this "card & drive gymnastics".

 

cheers.

 

(*) anything connected directly to the motherboard was left untouched.

[Joe L.]

gents, hopefully this should be quick and easy:

 

it turns out one of my (syba) sil3132 sata cards was kaput when i put it in my unraid box.  since it was the last scanned during the post, i thought nothing of it when connecting some hard drives to the two other cards since they were scanned before the defective unit.

 

imagine my astonishment when i replaced the faulty card with the new one, booted my server, only to discover that the drives attached to the first two cards scanned had been shuffled around! (*)  so i turned off the server, removed the new card, rebooted: big sigh of relief, the drives were again where they were/are supposed to be.

 

if i put back the good card in, can just go to the devices menu page, locate the concerned drives by their s/n, re-assign them to their proper place (drive 6 & drive 8 ) and simply start the array without having to do anything else?  that would be just grand.

 

of course, i will back up whatever small amount of data there is on these drives to a new 1tb drive i just put in before i do this "card & drive gymnastics".

 

cheers.

 

(*) anything connected directly to the motherboard was left untouched.

The "device" names are assigned as equipment is scanned by linux.  It will change from one boot to another if a given drive takes longer to spin up than another.

 

unRAID uses the "disk controller ports" in its config/disk.cfg file for that exact reason.  The disks do not move from cable to cable by themselves... usually, unless you change hardware.

 

Yes, you can just stop the array, go to the devices page, and assign the disks back to their original slots in the array and then go back to the main page and re-start it.  It is that easy.

 

Joe l.

[terrastrife]

the web gui makes this effortless as it lists the previous serial number so you can just go to devices and match it up, ive done it a few times now while rebuilding my box without any hassles.

[tmp31416]

thank you for the prompt answer.

again, to be paranoid, i just want to be sure i was clear:  when i go to the devices page and locate the drives by serial number, the fact that, say, "drive 6" will be on a different connection (e.g., /dev/sdg instead of /dev/sde) will not be a problem for unraid?  it is intelligent enough to recognize the drive's serial number and being the right one for "drive 6", no matter what sata port it is attached to?

 

again, i prefer to ask a dumb question and still have my data instead of being too proud for my own good, not ask any question only to find that i lost data.

 

cheers.

 

[Joe L.]

thank you for the prompt answer.

again, to be paranoid, i just want to be sure i was clear:  when i go to the devices page and locate the drives by serial number, the fact that, say, "drive 6" will be on a different connection (e.g., /dev/sdg instead of /dev/sde) will not be a problem for unraid?  it is intelligent enough to recognize the drive's serial number and being the right one for "drive 6", no matter what sata port it is attached to?

That is correct.

again, i prefer to ask a dumb question and still have my data instead of being too proud for my own good, not ask any question only to find that i lost data.

 

cheers.

It is a VERY smart person who will admit they don't know-it-all.

 

It will alert you if the drive serial numbers are not on the disk-controller ports they were originally.  You'll need to check the "I'm sure" checkbox if you switch cables among the data drives.  Now, if disk1 had movies, and disk3 had pictures, and you swap the cables, now disk1 will have pictures and disk3 movies. 

 

If you then re-assigned the drives on the "Devices" page to their original logical slots in the array all would be back as before.

 

The actual port (/dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc) is not involved at all.  unRAID could care less which port that linux assigns as the specific port can change from one boot to another, and from one version of linux to another (if it scans the hardware in a different sequence).

 

 

[tmp31416]

 

(snip)

It is a VERY smart person who will admit they don't know-it-all.

(snip)

 

 

well, if there is one thing i have learned after all these years, is that the more i know... the less i know.  and it's not because of the fact that i have worked on more kinds of technologies than i can remember off the top of my head.  computing is way, way more than just writing those two million lines of cobol mainframe applications for accounting...

 

cheers.

 

p.s.: thank you, Joe (and terrastrife).

[tmp31416]

hey, it worked!

 

Joe, i think i owe you a pint of Guinness!

 

whilst there are some rough edges to unraid, the more i have to, well, manage it and work with it, the happier i am that this colleague told me about it.

 

cheers!  (literally)