I am expecting the hardware for my unRaid server to show up early next week.  I want to transfer my existing RAID5 data to the new server.  I have about 4TB of data on the RAID5 system. 

 

I have purchased a 2TB HDD, and have a 1TB and a 1.5TB external that I will take apart to put into the server initially. that will have 4.5 TB of raw disk space with no parity drive.  Once the Data has copied over, I want to put 3 of the 1.5TB drives from the existing RAID into the unRAID box.  I will then copy the data off of the 2TB HDD onto  these 1.5TB drives freeing up the 2TB drive to use a parity drive.  At the End of it I should have 6 HDDs in the box with a total of 8TB of parity protected storage.

 

Anyone see any issues with this plan?  Any gotchas in changing the unRaid configuration at each step?  the last thing I need is to loss data in this process.

 

You will have a period where you are not protected (after you break the RAID5 setup, until you have established parity on unRAID).  If that's OK, then go for it.

 

If it was me, and the data was important, I'd pony up an extra $100 for a second 2GB drive, and get it all copied to unRAID with parity in place BEFORE breaking down and reusing the drives from the old RAID5.

 

You don't say how old or heavily the RAID5 array is.  The drives may be long in the tooth, and the "exercise" of such large amounts of copying (whole disk, 3 time (read from RAID, write in unRAID, and read for parity)) could be the straw that broke their backs.

 

 

Agreed, I would avoid trusting my data to any non-parity protected disk if at all possible.

I agree that it is not ideal, and If I had another hundred bucks to though at it right now I would, I am just trying to get more storage before the fall TV season starts, as I have no more drive bays available on the RAID5 Box.

 

If I only move one drive from the Raid5 to the Unraid after the data is copied, then I would have a degraded raid5 with full data, and a non protected unraid server until the parity is built.  The Raid5 would remained powered off until the parity on the unraid is built that way I would have some redundancy on the data until I have parity on the unraid.  The Raid5 drives are about a year old.

 

 

How many drives are in the RAID5?

 

I would not break the RAID5 past removing one disk and leaving it able to recover, until I had parity going on unRAID.  I also like to preserve the ability to backout of an upgrade as long as possible.

 

So I would to this:

 

First, preclear the three unRAID drives (2, 1.5 & 1)

1) Start unRAID and copy from the RAID5 to the 1+1.5, and as little as possible to the 2TB, ensure that no more than 1.5 is on the 2TB.  If so, store some elsewhere (like a desktop) temporarily)

2) then break the RAID5, move one drive from the RAID5 to unRAID, leave RAID5 down.

3) preclear the drive from the RAID5... if it fails or has suspect results from the preclear, do NOT proceed... replace it.

4) copy from the 2TB to the 1.5 from the broken RAID5

5) initiate parity on unRAID with the 2TB

 

At this point, if everything went to hell, you can still backout and go back to RAID5.  So run with it that way for a while.... if satisfied after a week, then you can permanently deconstruct the RAID5 and preclear those disks, and add them to unRAID.

5)

 

 

 

 

it is a 4 drive raid 5.  Sounds basically what I was planning on doing. 

Does anyone here know how the intel storage matrix works if I were to disconnect all the RAID 5 Drives and then if I needed to reconnect 3 of the back in?  I know that it is supposed to  support moving the drives to a new MB so I would think that would be the same thing?  (the RAID 5 is currently running on the HTPC machine, so downtime on it would need to be minimize)