Moving to new house - Physically moving server best practices


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Hi all,

Anyone have advice for physically moving my server to a new house? Going from NY to NJ, so not too far. I've got a Lian Li case with 14 drives in it. Definitely going to run a parity check ahead of the move, and pop the case to check wiring before booting up in new location, but I didn't know if there was anything else I should be aware of.

Keep the drives in the cages, or remove and back? Any special way to wrap up the server that's particularly safe for the move?

Thanks!

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24 minutes ago, Idaho121 said:

Hi all,

Anyone have advice for physically moving my server to a new house? Going from NY to NJ, so not too far. I've got a Lian Li case with 14 drives in it. Definitely going to run a parity check ahead of the move, and pop the case to check wiring before booting up in new location, but I didn't know if there was anything else I should be aware of.

Keep the drives in the cages, or remove and back? Any special way to wrap up the server that's particularly safe for the move?

Thanks!

I moved my server from the U.S. to Mexico for three years and then back again. I removed all drives form the server and wrapped them individually in bubble wrap and then had extra padding between the drives as I stacked them in a shipping box. It is probably not a good idea to leave them in the server, especially if you will not be moving the server yourself.  It was four weeks in transit each way and I was taking no chances.  Without intact data and functioning drives, you have no server. 

 

Before removing the drives, I labelled them with the slot number and the took a screenshot of the disk assignments so they could be returned to the same physical location.  It is not vitally important they be placed in the same hot-swap bay/cage slot as unRAID tracks drives by serial number,

 

I also removed the boot/license USB drive and the RAM and carried that with me in my laptop bag during the move.

 

Perhaps none of this is necessary in your case if you are moving it yourself and you are very careful.  I just don't like moving my server any distance with the drives still in it.

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I moved my server from the U.S. to Mexico for three years and then back again. I removed all drives form the server and wrapped them individually in bubble wrap and then had extra padding between the drives as I stacked them in a shipping box. It is probably not a good idea to leave them in the server, especially if you will not be moving the server yourself.  It was four weeks in transit each way and I was taking no chances.  Without intact data and functioning drives, you have no server. 
 
Before removing the drives, I labelled them with the slot number and the took a screenshot of the disk assignments so they could be returned to the same physical location.  It is not vitally important they be placed in the same hot-swap bay/cage slot as unRAID tracks drives by serial number,
 
I also removed the boot/license USB drive and the RAM and carried that with me in my laptop bag during the move.
 
Perhaps none of this is necessary in your case if you are moving it yourself and you are very careful.  I just don't like moving my server any distance with the drives still in it.
Def good advice...when I moved to Mexico, I packed the server up well. When it arrived, I had a chunk of fan in the server, and a bad motherboard. No idea how a fan blade broke nor why the motherboard failed as it was working fine when I packed it up.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

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On 1/18/2019 at 4:18 PM, Hoopster said:

I moved my server from the U.S. to Mexico for three years and then back again. I removed all drives form the server and wrapped them individually in bubble wrap and then had extra padding between the drives as I stacked them in a shipping box.

Exactly what I did.

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