I am about to spin up an unraid system but had a quick question. A search of the forum did not really show an answer, sorry if it is a duplicate. 

 

I want to transition from and old system to unraid. I dont want to buy a bunch of disks so I kind of need to cobble something together to move to, and then move the big disk from the old system into unraid. My question is, how easy is clearing a disk that currently has data on it off? My plan would be to transition the data off the smaller disk and then swap in a bigger disk. 

 

Thanks

 

I'm not 100% sure I understand the question.

 

But it is quite easy to shink an unRAID array if you want to remove a data disk.

 

You should let unRAID create the file system for your larger disk before you start filling it, to make sure the disk gets the correct alignment of the file system.

Ok, 

Sorry, tough thing to explain. 

I will want to migrate all of my data off a disk in unraid in order to swap it with a larger one. I am just checking to see if this is easy or convoluted. 

One solution is to use the plugin Unassigned Devices in unRAID.

That allows you to mount additional disks that aren't part of the array.

This gives you a way to run unRAID and copy data from other disks.

 

Another solution is the one I mentioned - have unRAID format one data disk and then connect that disk to your current machine (assuming it runs Linux) and copy data to it.

 

The variant with Unassigned Devices means you can build parity while copying. But on the other hand, the copying will be slower because of the extra work of concurrently updating the parity disk.

2 hours ago, TheCDay said:

Ok, 

Sorry, tough thing to explain. 

I will want to migrate all of my data off a disk in unraid in order to swap it with a larger one. I am just checking to see if this is easy or convoluted. 

I am still not sure what the question you are asking is?   If it is can a disk that is in use by unRAID later be replaced by a larger one and keep the data intact then this is standard capability within an unRAID system.    However you talk about migrating data off a disk in unRAID so maybe I misunderstand what you sctually want?

If i understand correct, you want to remove a drive and add a new?

 

If the drive you want to add is not bigger or atleast the same size as your parity, you could just replace them and rebuild parity.

 

or?

Got the system and messed around, its exactly as nuhll described. I was just looking for some pre build advise on how it was done. 

Thanks everyone for the answers!