Swapping Motherboards and SATA cards

[ARAMP1]

I'm currently running version 6.3.5 with 10 disks and a couple more that I want to add.  This is my first time working with UnRAID and so far, it's been a good experience.  

 

I had a cheap Realtec SATA card (SYBA SI-PEX40071)  on hand and used it for the build.  The recommended hardware page says it works right out of the box but the PCIex2 is a bottleneck.  And, I noticed something was odd when I swapped hard drives around (to keep the disk numbers in a more orderly arrangement) that when I swapped a hard drive from the onboard SATA port to the PCIe card SATA port, it would say the hard drive was missing (though I could see it on the main identification drop down).  Anyway, I swapped everything back and it works fine.  

 

Now, I want to upgrade the motherboard and use a recommended LSI card.  What kind of trouble will I have swapping everything over?

 

[JorgeB]

6 hours ago, ARAMP1 said:

that when I swapped a hard drive from the onboard SATA port to the PCIe card SATA port, it would say the hard drive was missing

That shound'h happen, likely one of your controllers was identifying the drives with some little difference, we'd need the diagnostics to confirm.

 

6 hours ago, ARAMP1 said:

Now, I want to upgrade the motherboard and use a recommended LSI card.  What kind of trouble will I have swapping everything over?

Usually you just replace the controller and boot, there's nothing more to it.

 

[SSD]

Drives attached to disk controllers follow a certain naming convention consisting of model and serial number that is unique (or should be) for every drive.

 

For example ...

 

HGST_HDN728080ALE604_VLKKxxxx

 

There are a very few situations where different controllers can assign the same disk a different name. Usually the differences are very minor. But if it happens, unRAID does not see the disk as matching a current disk assignment. This has been an issue with Areca controllers. There is actually a plugin called "Dynamix SCSI Devices" that fixes the naming anomaly, at least for Areca controllers.

 

The reason that moving disks across controllers works so effortlessly is because of the naming convention standard. If you have a controller that violates this standard it would create issues. If you recorded a disk name that was not standard, and it were moved to a controller that didn't follow the standard, suddenly unRAID would report that as a missing / failed disk, even though the disk is right there. Again, looking carefully at the name you'd see some minor difference. 

 

There is an easy fix. You can do a new config, retain the configuration, assign the missing disk to its correct slow, and when you start the array, trust parity.

 

The only controllers I am aware that have this problem are RAID controllers like the Areca's. But it is the only thing that came to mind that could explain issues with disks moving between controllers.

[drcos]

I had a controller card flake out on me, and thought I lost my array (mini heart attack).  Fortunately, I realized it was three drives (parity, cache, and one array drive) on the card.

(Slight) problem once I got things fixed, my parity was disabled and I had to rebuild parity even though I had not changed anything in the array from before the problem.  What I did:

1. PANIC (array wouldn't start, missing parity and cache drive (not assigned) and drive 7 (showed ID)

2. Determine problem, fix problem, reboot.

3. Array starts with parity disabled (red X on parity drive)

4. Stop array, restart...parity disabled.

5. Reboot.  Array starts...parity disabled.

6. Stop array. Unassign parity.  Re-assign parity (no option for 'parity is valid').  Restart array, parity rebuild.

Not a huge issue, as rebuilding parity took about an hour longer than checking parity.

 

One remaining issue, Windows no longer sees the unRaid by name on the network.  Can still access by IP. (edit - this seems to be a Windows issue, don't know why it started suddenly)

 

[SSD]

I added my unRAID server to my computer's hosts file. Solved a myriad of issues of not being able to find the server.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file)

[drcos]

Thanks SSD, never thought to do the HOSTS thing.

Also, changed out a bad controller card, and have to rebuild parity again...

[lovswr]

So don't you have to also get your unRAID license changed if you make a motherboard swap?  It's been a long time since I swapped out a motherboard, but since I started using plex it's time to get something better than this ancient single threaded AMD CPU I got now.

[pwm]

4 hours ago, lovswr said:

So don't you have to also get your unRAID license changed if you make a motherboard swap?  It's been a long time since I swapped out a motherboard, but since I started using plex it's time to get something better than this ancient single threaded AMD CPU I got now.

 

The license is locked to the USB boot device. So only when you replace the thumb drive, will you also have to get a new license that matches the serial number of the new USB drive.

[lovswr]

3 hours ago, pwm said:

 

The license is locked to the USB boot device. So only when you replace the thumb drive, will you also have to get a new license that matches the serial number of the new USB drive.

Ahh, thanks!