January 5, 20188 yr I'm new to unRAID and just set up my first unRAID server. I'm gonna use most of it for media as movies and tv shows, but also for pictures, and backup of the pictures. I got at least two 8TB disks I want to use, but also two 1TB disks. I was first thinking about using on of the 8TB disks as parity disk, but I kind of think it's overkill to use backup to that kind of media I mostly got, and I also kind of want that second 8TB as storage space to. But I would like to have backup function for my pictures and like the idea of a parity disk. That's why I'm wondering if it's possible for me to keep two 8TB disk as an array without parity, as one large 16TB share, but also in the same machine have another array with one 1TB and a second 1TB as parity disk to the first 1TB disk? Is there another way for me to get a great backup function to one disk, without using a large 8TB disk as parity? Thanks. /Söder
January 5, 20188 yr The way unRAID works is that your parity disk must be equal to or larger than your largest disk, so unfortunately in your case, you must use the second 8TB disk for parity. You don't have to have a parity disk but if you want your data protected, other then having a backup of your data somewhere else, it's the only way. Think about it, if you fill that 8TB disk with data, and it dies, the parity disk can assist in restoring that data, otherwise it's all gone, unless you have it backed up. If you are located in the US, the WD My Book drives go on sale quite often and many people buy them and pull the drive out, it's the cheapest way to get an 8TB drive. You should be aware however that you void the warranty by pulling the drive out.
January 5, 20188 yr Author Well, the data I got on the 8tb isn't that imported to me. We can say it's 8TB of PDF files I easy can download again. That's why I wonder if could be possible with a second array with a 1TB disk instead as the biggest drive, and then use another 1TB disk as parity to only that disk, not the 8TB disk with PDF files. /Söder
January 5, 20188 yr No, but you can have the 8TB unaissigned or assigned as cache and outside parity.
January 5, 20188 yr You can accomplish what you want using unraid, but you will not be using it the way most people do. Assign the 2 8TB disks as data drives, then assign the 2 1TB disks as cache drives. The default setting for multiple cache drives is RAID1 BTRFS, which will theoretically allow for failure of one of the members. However.... I trust unraid's parity protection scheme WAY more than I trust BTRFS RAID1 when it comes to drive recovery, notification of issues, and ease of dealing with recovery, so... Another way of handling it would be to put a 1TB in as parity, the other 1TB as a data drive, and both 8TB's in the cache pool. Then change the cache pool profile to RAID0, and you will have 1TB of parity protected space, and 16TB of cache drive, which can be used to permanently house data, it doesn't have to be used as cache. None of these scenarios is "normal", so you will be outside of the standard tutorials and standard ways of getting things done. You will need to have a high tolerance for thinking outside the box and figuring out how to make it work.
January 7, 20188 yr Author OK. To bad that it needs to be done that one. I was hoping I could do it in a more normal way. Maybe I need to keep the two 1TB disks outside of the array then, and just mount the two diskar separately and do some kind of "manual backup" on the other 1TB disk. /Söder
January 7, 20188 yr 4 minutes ago, soder said: Maybe I need to keep the two 1TB disks outside of the array then, and just mount the two diskar separately and do some kind of "manual backup" on the other 1TB disk. That's a good option, you can for example easily schedule an rsync backup with the desired frequency using the user scripts plugin.
January 8, 20188 yr Author Is there a way to format an Unassigned Device in unRAID without adding it to an array first? One of my 1TB disks is in EXT3, and the other is in xfs. I guess xfs is the way to go even if the disks are in mounted mode as unassigned devices? /Söder
January 8, 20188 yr The UD plugin can format disks, after destructive mode is enable in the settings.
January 8, 20188 yr Author 1 hour ago, johnnie.black said: The UD plugin can format disks, after destructive mode is enable in the settings. Hmm, destructive mode is now enabled, but I can't find where to format a disk.. /Söder
January 9, 20188 yr Author Thanks for the help. I managed to format the disk with UD. Great with the help function in unRAID. Didn't know about that. Thought it just was a link to a FAQ or something like that. About the rsync, how does that work? Can it be configured with incremental backup or something similar? /Söder
January 9, 20188 yr 20 minutes ago, soder said: About the rsync, how does that work? Google it and you'll find a lot of examples how to use it. 21 minutes ago, soder said: Can it be configured with incremental backup or something similar? Yes.
January 10, 20188 yr Author What do you think of this? rsync -av --size-only --delete /mnt/user/media/pictures/ /mnt/disks/SAMSUNG_1/pictures/ rsync -av --size-only /mnt/user/media/pictures/ /mnt/disks/SAMSUNG_2/pictures/ The first will also remove pictures that I might have removed or edited. The second will copy only new stuff? /Söder Quote
January 10, 20188 yr The "great" thing with --delete (and most traditional use of rsync) is that when you do something dumb on your primary storage then rsync will mirror that accident to the secondary copy. That's the difference from running a real backup - a backup should be able to store multiple generations of the same file so you after a bad file change can find both the changed and the unchanged file in the backup. And a backup should contain the files you have removed from the main storage, up to the retention limit you have specified. Note that there are multiple solutions available that implement real backup using the rsync framework. Solutions that gives retention and supports file versioning.
January 10, 20188 yr Author 3 minutes ago, pwm said: The "great" thing with --delete (and most traditional use of rsync) is that when you do something dumb on your primary storage then rsync will mirror that accident to the secondary copy. That's the difference from running a real backup - a backup should be able to store multiple generations of the same file so you after a bad file change can find both the changed and the unchanged file in the backup. And a backup should contain the files you have removed from the main storage, up to the retention limit you have specified. Note that there are multiple solutions available that implement real backup using the rsync framework. Solutions that gives retention and supports file versioning. Do you have any suggestions of these solutions that are available for backup? About the --delete, that's why I make two different. One that's 1:1 from the main storage, and one that do not delete files. /Söder
January 10, 20188 yr Just a couple of tips and ideas - I recommend that you spend a bit of time Googling around. http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/ https://blog.interlinked.org/tutorials/rsync_time_machine.html https://github.com/hkbakke/rsync-backup https://github.com/pedroetb/rsync-incremental-backup http://jeffskinnerbox.me/posts/2014/Feb/08/network-backups-via-rsync-and-rsnapshot/
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