I thought someone said earlier rebuilding would take on whatever filesystem was on disk1 previously 

16 minutes ago, crizz11 said:

I thought someone said earlier rebuilding would take on whatever filesystem was on disk1 previously 

It does. When you do this

29 minutes ago, trurl said:

Reformat all other disks to XFS.

Followed by this

29 minutes ago, trurl said:

Replace/rebuild disk1 onto the old parity disk

the filesystem on disk1 just previous to that rebuild IS an empty XFS filesystem.

 

Rebuilding doesn't do anything like trying to remember what filesystem was there before, using that to format the disk, then copy the files onto it. It just uses the parity calculation to reconstruct each individual bit that was on the disk before. All those individual bits ARE the filesystem with all its contents.

 

In this particular case, after you have formatted all other disks (which includes disk1) as XFS, disk1 is an empty XFS disk. Then rebuilding it to another disk results in an empty XFS disk because all of its individual bits are an empty XFS filesystem.

 

 

All this might make more sense to you if you understood how parity works. It isn't magic or even very complicated. Here is a wiki:

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/UnRAID_6/Overview#Parity-Protected_Array

 

The main reason many of us know what to do in all these situations isn't because we have been in the situation ourselves, or because we have read somewhere about that specific situation. It is simply because we understand parity.

Oh you said copy all other disks (including disk1) to the new 10tb disk, then format all other disks to xfs.  I understand what you meant now but it won't fit as those 3 other disks total 11tb

OK. I had neglected to add them all up since I was originally thinking in terms of rebuilding disk1 onto the new disk. You will have to break it up then instead of doing it all at once. Doesn't really change much.

 

Copy whichever disks you want and will fit onto the new disk.

Reformat those copied disks as XFS. That should leave just one to convert.

Copy that remaining disk onto one of those freshly formatted XFS disks.

Reformat that remaining disk as XFS.

Rebuild disk1 onto the old parity disk.

 

Awesome, thanks for your help and patience and sorry for the confusion.  I was just thrown by what you had said cos in my mind I had remembered it was 11tb of data.  All good now and thanks for the recommendation. 

Probably better to copy the larger disks first then you will be sure to have enough space when it comes time to copy the smaller disk1.

Just now, crizz11 said:

Awesome, thanks for your help and patience and sorry for the confusion.  I was just thrown by what you had said cos in my mind I had remembered it was 11tb of data.  All good now and thanks for the recommendation. 

It is a little larger than 10TB so you will have to do some of it separately. Here is another version of the steps with some additional details:

1. Go to Settings - Disk Settings and set Autostart to NO. Also on that page, check and make sure the default filesystem is XFS.
2. Shutdown and install new 10TB disk.
3. Reboot and assign new 10TB disk to a new data slot.
4. Start the array. At this step, Unraid will clear the disk if it hasn't been precleared so parity will remain valid. Then it will let you format it.
5. Copy all data from disks 2,3 to new 10TB disk. If satisfied copy went well proceed to next step.
6. Reformat disks 2,3 to XFS. To do this, stop the array, then go to each of those disk's page by clicking on them in Main, and change their filesystem to XFS. Starting the array will reformat them.
7. Copy disk1 to one of those freshly formatted XFS disks, such as disk2.
8. Reformat disk1 to XFS using the same method as above.
9. Stop array and replace disk1 with the old parity disk. Starting array will begin rebuild.

After any rebuild (step 9) we always recommend a noncorrecting parity check to confirm that the rebuild went well.

 

I'm sure there are some details I haven't mentioned, so if you have any doubts, questions or difficulties along the way, let us know.

ok going well so far, im up to step 5 and using the krusader docker

i am looking in /mnt/disk2 on the left pane of krusader and have chosen a folder on that disk called "PICTURES" to drag over to the right pane in krusader that is looking in /mnt/disk4/   and after dragging i chose to copy  .  Now even though for the "PICTURES" "SHARE" in unraid i have set it up to use "ALL" disks there was no pictures folder on /mnt/disk4/     .  After i have copied everything from disk2 to disk4 and then formatted disk2, will the "PICTURES" "SHARE" automatically pick up the content in the "PICTURES" folder on /mnt/disk4  after i start the array?

54 minutes ago, crizz11 said:

ok going well so far, im up to step 5 and using the krusader docker

i am looking in /mnt/disk2 on the left pane of krusader and have chosen a folder on that disk called "PICTURES" to drag over to the right pane in krusader that is looking in /mnt/disk4/   and after dragging i chose to copy  .  Now even though for the "PICTURES" "SHARE" in unraid i have set it up to use "ALL" disks there was no pictures folder on /mnt/disk4/     .  After i have copied everything from disk2 to disk4 and then formatted disk2, will the "PICTURES" "SHARE" automatically pick up the content in the "PICTURES" folder on /mnt/disk4  after i start the array?

Yes, as long as disk4 is not excluded in the global share settings. All root folders on any disk are automatically included in user shares. If you want to, you could globally exclude all your currently formatted ReiserFS disks in global share settings, then as you finish verifying the copy and format them XFS, remove them from the global exclude. Then your user shares will only show the items on the XFS disks.

 

BTW, while this is going on, don't write any new content to the user shares on the server if you can help it. If you must add new content, make sure you confirm exactly which disk it goes to. Reading existing content is fine, just no additions or especially no edits or modifications to existing files, unless you do the global exclude trick I was talking about.

thanks for the confirmation, can get away with no writes while this is going on, thanks for the heads up.  and yes global share settings has included disks set to all

Edited January 10, 20197 yr by crizz11

1 hour ago, jonathanm said:

there was no pictures folder on /mnt/disk4/

 

1 hour ago, jonathanm said:

will the "PICTURES" "SHARE" automatically pick up the content in the "PICTURES" folder on /mnt/disk4

So which is it? Is there a pictures folder on /mnt/disk4 or not?

1 hour ago, jonathanm said:

All root folders on any disk are automatically included in user shares.

The user shares aren't going to make a PICTURES folder. It will just include a top level folder named PICTURES on disk4 in the PICTURES share. Your copy operation has to result in a top level folder named PICTURES on disk4 or those files won't be in that user share. Are you sure you copied the folder and not just its contents?

there wasn't one before i copied it over from /mnt/disk2  .  now /mnt/disk4/PICTURES  exists

3 minutes ago, crizz11 said:

there wasn't one before i copied it over from /mnt/disk2  .  now /mnt/disk4/PICTURES  exists

OK. I thought you meant the copy operation wasn't resulting in a PICTURES folder on disk4.

its all good im pretty sure.   Jonathan confirmed/explained and i understand what is and will happen, 100% there is a PICTURES folder on /mnt/disk2 and now also on /mnt/disk4     same size, same amount of files etc.

On 1/10/2019 at 1:34 AM, trurl said:

1. Go to Settings - Disk Settings and set Autostart to NO. Also on that page, check and make sure the default filesystem is XFS.
2. Shutdown and install new 10TB disk.
3. Reboot and assign new 10TB disk to a new data slot.
4. Start the array. At this ste..........

 

Thanks trurl this all went fine.  Thanks so much for all your help and detailed instructions, really appreciate the time and effort you put into helping me.  Thanks to everyone else who provided help as well.  The one thing i forgot to consider when copying the files across was to preserve file dates so this will create a problem when organising things by date added in kodi for example, oh well, at least the data is all safe thanks to you guys.