I am new to the forum and I am unaware if this has been discussed before. I am wondering if I can use the same key on the same thumbdrive. I want to reinstall Unraid to reconfigure as I screwed up a few things. I know that is probably a really stupid question but I try to live by "ask first assume later". Thanks for your help.

You can, but it might be more useful to consider what you mean by "reinstall" and what you want to accomplish by reinstalling.

 

In some sense, Unraid "installs" itself each time it boots. The OS is contained in archives on the flash drive. Those archives are exactly as they were from the download that created them. During boot, those original archives are unpacked from the flash drive, and installed into RAM. The OS runs completely in RAM.

 

The only thing that has changed is changes you have made to your configuration in the webUI. Those are all in the config folder on flash. The OS itself hasn't changed, and the OS doesn't accumulate the sort of things that might make you consider a clean install of some other OS such as Windows.
 

What exactly have you screwed up? What would you do differently this time if you started over? You can probably just fix those things, perhaps with some guidance. Or remove some things and keep others.

 

At the very least, you might want to at least keep your disk assignments, unless you want to wipe your disks as part of your reinstall.

 

 

 

Well ... I don't understand your question and I'm a really stupid person so I'm guessing the answer to your question is yes 😏. Someone a lot cleverer than the both if us will no doubt come along and give you the same answer.

Trurl .... that was quick!! 

@squirreltats First thing to do is to make a complete copy of the flash drive (Thumbdrive) before you go any further.  you can do this quite quickly from the GUI by go to   Main   >>>  Boot Device   Click on 'Flash' in the Device column. Click on the "Flash Device Settings" tab and find the 'Flash Backup' button at the middle bottom.  That will download the backup to the download directory/folder of your browser.  Make sure that you keep this file safe from deletion as it will have your registration file (*.key) in the config folder in that zip file.   

 

That registration file (*.key) is tied to the GUID serial number of that flash drive and will only work with that flash drive. 

 

Tell what you think you screwed up and most likely, we can tell how to fix it easily.  In some cases, we can tell to simply delete certain files and Unraid will regenerate that file with the default configuration.  

Posting diagnostics might give us some idea of things that need fixing. Saves a lot of questions.

I have folders and items in shares that I am unable to delete because it says I do not have permission. What am I... four? (Chill, it was a joke).

Also, some setting or docker or something has eaten up most space on one disk. I have been dickin' around and frankly would like to start with a clean slate, I have nothing on the disks that I wish to keep.

I have not stored anything significant on there as I am new to unraid and still learning the ropes.

You can get some help with all of these problems but we need some info from you.  The first thing is that Diagnostics file   Tools    >>>   Diagnostics    and upload the resulting zip file (it will be in your Browser's download directory/folder) in your next post! 

25 minutes ago, squirreltats said:

I have folders and items in shares that I am unable to delete because it says I do not have permission.

Have you changed the security on your Shares from 'Public' to 'Secure' or 'Private'? 

 

Did you add any "users" to your server? 

 

Were the files/directory in question added by a Docker or a plugin?

Edited August 27, 20196 yr by Frank1940

9 hours ago, squirreltats said:

I have folders and items in shares that I am unable to delete because it says I do not have permission. What am I... four? (Chill, it was a joke).

Also, some setting or docker or something has eaten up most space on one disk. I have been dickin' around and frankly would like to start with a clean slate, I have nothing on the disks that I wish to keep.

I have not stored anything significant on there as I am new to unraid and still learning the ropes.

Reinstalling the USB will not erase or change the content of the data disks.

 

If you want to completely start over, that's cool, but I suspect if you don't know what happened to get yourself in this state, it's just going to happen again.

 

Make sure you have a copy of the key file from the config folder, and then go nuts. Delete whatever, format, experiment, since you don't have anything critical, do whatever you want to figure out how you want to do things.

 

If you wish to erase the data drives, the quickest way is to stop the array, click on the drive in the main gui, change the desired format type on the drive, start the array, check the box that says I'm sure, and format the drive. To redo the USB, you would use another computer, format it and prepare it the same way you did originally, then copy the key file that you backed up into the config folder.