Upgrading CPU/Motherboard Process?


Endda

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So I feel I have reached my limit of 14 3.5" hard drives in my Define case and am looking to upgrade to something much bigger (like 20-24).

 

I have found the case I need, but since starting with unRAID I have always used a mid-range CPU and motherboard. I am letting a couple more people use my Plex install and really just in an increase in Docker installs, in general, has gone up.

 

I know upgrading RAM won't be a problem as I have done this in the past, but I am curious about how unRAID will handle being upgraded to a new motherboard and CPU. I don't know if I will go balls to the wall and go threadripper (is that working properly with unRAID yet), or just go with something like an i7-7700k with an ASUS motherboard that has 8 native SATA ports.

 

So, my question is, how difficult is the process when upgrading from what I have now, to what I will be upgrading to? I know that unRAID is installed and configured on that thumb drive. . .but will I need to do something to the files inside it ahead of time (or after the transition) for it to be a smooth transition? The closer I can get to a plug in play process with this upgrade, the better.

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I just upgrade MB/CPU/RAM.  I went from i5-2400 to Ryzen 5 2600 - which meant a complete swap. Other than the loader not picking up the amount of RAM I have installed, the issue was literally one of assembly - how long did it take me to assemble the new setup in my old case?  There was very little impact on Unraid (I had to add a mem configuration to the syslinux.cfg file).  If it hadn't been for that, I think it would have been plug and play.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 10/20/2018 at 10:02 AM, whipdancer said:

I just upgrade MB/CPU/RAM.  I went from i5-2400 to Ryzen 5 2600 - which meant a complete swap. Other than the loader not picking up the amount of RAM I have installed, the issue was literally one of assembly - how long did it take me to assemble the new setup in my old case?  There was very little impact on Unraid (I had to add a mem configuration to the syslinux.cfg file).  If it hadn't been for that, I think it would have been plug and play.

 

So I am finally going through with the upgrade. Parts will be here by Tuesday. Using a case (SilverStone TJ11-BW) with 9 5.25 slots and am using these to fill them up. . .

 

 - https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B007VLDU8A/

 

Got some compatible RAM for the AMD Ryzen 7 1700 and motherboard ASUS Prime X370-Pro that I chose to go with. I will be putting it all together and using those hot-swap bays to check a hard drive that I know works (and make sure it shows up in bios). I'll then move the drive, check bios and continue with this process to make sure all of those cages are working as they should.

 

I will then go through with the process of transferring my 14 3.5 drives to the new machine and hoping that I can just boot from the USB stick and everything will work properly.

 

@whipdancer you said you had an issue with unRAID not picking up the amount of RAM you have (I'm only upgrading from a mixed bag of 12GB to a matching set of 16GB. What did you have to do to get it working properly? What was the "mem configuration' you had to add to syslinux.cfg?

 

_____________________________________________

 

For anyone else who has shifted from Intel to Ryzen, any tips or suggestions that you have for me? I'll be able to do test the new hardware during the week but it won't be until next weekend that I can do the full system swap. So I'm looking for anything type of issue that I could run into so that I know what to look for ahead of time.

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On 11/18/2018 at 1:32 AM, Endda said:

For anyone else who has shifted from Intel to Ryzen, any tips or suggestions that you have for me? I'll be able to do test the new hardware during the week but it won't be until next weekend that I can do the full system swap. So I'm looking for anything type of issue that I could run into so that I know what to look for ahead of time.

I'm migrating from an old (i7-2700k) based system to a new TR2 2950X build also this week. I have very laughable 4TB of drives to shift, but preserving the data is my number one mission too. I'm also hoping for an easy-going hardware swap out.

 

Will let you know how it goes!

 

Cheers,

 

Xav.

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So, for what it is worth - brilliant upgrade experience! Completely new hardware build - I just ensured I had the drives connected to the same SATA ports, booted off the USB key and everything came up exactly as before.

 

Upgraded to 6.6.5; no problems. Very smooth experience, and I'm relieved to access to all my data - intact! - once again. How did you go?

 

Cheers,

 

Xav.

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25 minutes ago, xavierda said:

So, for what it is worth - brilliant upgrade experience! Completely new hardware build - I just ensured I had the drives connected to the same SATA ports, booted off the USB key and everything came up exactly as before.

 

Upgraded to 6.6.5; no problems. Very smooth experience, and I'm relieved to access to all my data - intact! - once again. How did you go?

 

Cheers,

 

Xav.

Congrats!

 

Well, I bought three 5.25 HDD cages and upon checking them two out of 5 slots on cage #3 didn't work. So I had to wait for Amazon to ship a replacement (UPS is supposed to pick up the bad cage today).

 

With the third cage being delivered yesterday (and checked to be working), I began putting things together. Put the mobo, cpu, ram in the new case. Put the cages in the new case and began hooking up as many cables as possible. With a suggestion from here. . .

 

 - 

 

 

I created a new USB drive just to make sure unRAID would detect the RAM, chip, and motherboard. Which it did. So I then began swapping out drives. 14 hard drive swaps later and I go to power it up.

 

But this is where things went sour. Four drives weren't detected from the top cage. My old setup used two 4 port SATA cards but I had bought a 2 port mini SAS card that should have been able to replace both of them (since each mini SAS cable has four SATA connectors). But the drives that were not being detected were all from that second cable/slot on that SAS card.

 

It's possible that I had the card in the wrong slot but to eliminate that I just unplugged those 4 drives from that port and plugged them into one of my 4 port SATA cards. Booted up and all four drives were connected! Bravo at first. . .but one 4TB drive was spitting out errors (like 500 errors in the time I had the machine on.

 

But I had an extra 8TB drive in there so I figured I could move the machine from my room and back into the living room. I was careful, no hard bumps or anything, but when I booted it up in there not only did those 4 drives not show up, but the cache drive didn't either. That perplexed me because the cache drive is connected directly to the motherboard SATA port with a power cable running to it.

 

So, I work from home and am going to try and get as much work done as quickly as possible so I can go in the living room and try to make sure the cables are all connected properly. . .or something. I'll reseat the cards, check the cabling and hope for the best.

 

At least one of us had a smooth uprade though! I'm truly happy yours went through flawlessly!

 

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23 hours ago, Endda said:

At least one of us had a smooth uprade though! I'm truly happy yours went through flawlessly!

Thanks - to be honest, I only had 4 SATA drives. I'm reading your experience with interest though as my new case has a lot more room for easy expansion and I will have to go to SATA or SAS cards to boost port density. That may make future upgrades of HW a bit more complex.

 

Did you eliminate the cables with the new SAS card as the issue? With the drive spitting out errors, was it failing before you started upgrading? Can you just use the same SATA cards to get everything up and running, then swap them over to the SAS ones?

 

Hope you're having a bit more luck!

 

Xav.

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11 hours ago, xavierda said:

Thanks - to be honest, I only had 4 SATA drives. I'm reading your experience with interest though as my new case has a lot more room for easy expansion and I will have to go to SATA or SAS cards to boost port density. That may make future upgrades of HW a bit more complex.

 

Did you eliminate the cables with the new SAS card as the issue? With the drive spitting out errors, was it failing before you started upgrading? Can you just use the same SATA cards to get everything up and running, then swap them over to the SAS ones?

 

Hope you're having a bit more luck!

 

Xav.

So yea, after a bit of investigation it turns out the SATA power cables were having trouble giving power to the one drive cage at the top. I noticed the bottom two cages had fans that would spin up on first boot. . .but the top one didn't. Not sure why as I had tested each of these cages (maybe it was the splitter I had to use).

 

So I switched to Molex to power them and everything went smooth as butter after a rebuild.

 

That drive that was spitting out errors was spitting out errors had to have been some anomaly because every other boot didn't have this issue. (likely a loose cable) as it was running fine before. All of my drives were running well before the upgrade.

 

And yes, you can use the same SATA cards and then switch them over to SAS ones because unRAID is just recognizing these drives from the serial number or whatever.

 

But yea, rebuilt a 4TB drive that was showing up as faulty ( likely due to me cutting power too quickly), cleared an 8TB drive I didn't have any room for before, and now I am back up and running. A total of 72TB (not including the parity drive) accessible storage space now. And that's only using the 15 slots from the HDD cages (only a few 8TBs in there). So I can either follow through swapping out 4TB drives for 8TB ones or use the 6 extra HDD slots in the basement of this case (SilverStone TJ11-BW).

 

It cost like like $500, but I'm a digital hoarder and don't have any other hobbies so it's what I do.

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