So coming up here very Soon I'm "retiring" my original unraid server that has been running off and on for 8 years now.  It evolved a lot over the years but it's replacement is going to be far more capable and robust, even if it is 5 year old processors. 

The question I have to pose for everyone is this, right now there is nothing on the array that is vital, just tv and movies for my plex and I am not running with parity as I really don't care too much if I lose them, I plan to migrate the drives to a new machine and think it's time to wipe out the flash drive that's in there and let it start over.  There are files and debris from having various versions on there over time and I think I'd like to just start it with a fresh install, no unmenu files lurking about, no random leftovers from installed packages I messed around with 5 years ago etc.   Since I'm not running parity and the drives are all good active drives at the moment am I able to just start a new array in the new machine, add those data disks to an array and fire it up and go, recreating my shares and what not based on their contents? 

 

The new machine will have a 24 port backplane and 10 internal sata so I'll have a lot more options than my currently 16 drive capped machine (it's in a norco 4224 but I need more sas ports to expand further) so I'll most likely be adding back a parity drive, maybe running my cache drive as a pool of ssd's etc..

 

I just really am curious if I can just pop the drives into a new flash and let her rip.. I have 2 licenses so i can setup a second flash drive and leave the original in tact just in case.

Sounds fine. All the shares will automatically show up as public, and there will be no users defined.