Do I Need Additional hardware to create a Disk Array

[Leppard]

Hey guys, I'm interested on migrating my current Ubuntu Server to Unraid, my Ubuntu Server does not have any raid arrays so if one of my Hard Drives fail I would loose everything on the disk, so I am searching for security and recovery possibility in case of a Disk failure, but for this I have the following questions...

 

1.- Do I need a Raid Controller to be able to view my Hard Drives as an array?

2.- My hard drives are currently  formatted with EXT4 file system, do I have to format them for Unraid to recognize them?

3.- If I need to format my existing hard drives to be able to use them with Unraid, what would the best route to backup my information to the new Array?

 

Thank you very much for your help.

 

 

[JorgeB]

8 minutes ago, Leppard said:

1.- Do I need a Raid Controller to be able to view my Hard Drives as an array?

No, in fact you want to avoid RAID controllers, use onboard SATA ports and/or an HBA.

 

8 minutes ago, Leppard said:

2.- My hard drives are currently  formatted with EXT4 file system, do I have to format them for Unraid to recognize them?

Yes, Unraid always needs to format the devices, even when using a supported filesystem, and EXT4 isn't one of them.

 

9 minutes ago, Leppard said:

3.- If I need to format my existing hard drives to be able to use them with Unraid, what would the best route to backup my information to the new Array?

You just need one free disk, added it as disk1 and format with Unraid, mount one of your ext4 disks with the UD plugin and copy the data to disk1, then add that disk as disk2, a new ext4 as unassigned and repeat.

 

[trurl]

1. It is recommended that you DON'T use a RAID controller with Unraid. Unraid is NOT RAID. Unraid allows folders to span volumes (User Shares).

 

2. Unraid can read EXT4 using the Unassigned Devices plugin, but you must let Unraid format any disk it will use in the parity array or cache pool.

 

3. Not clear what you mean exactly. If you start with an empty disk in the array, you can use Unassigned Devices to copy the existing data. In any case, do you have backups? You must always have another copy of anything important and irreplaceable, regardless of parity, etc.

[Leppard]

Thank you very much for your help, so then from what I understand, I can grow my array dynamically adding as many hard drives as my computer can handle right? on the other hand I suppose it is not desirable, but can I add USB Drives to my array?

 

So as Unraid can ready EXT4 drives, I suppose the way to go would be add at least one parity drive and one hard drive to the array, copy all the content from one of the drives to the array, once totally transferred, and the now empty drive to the array and connect another EXT4 … transfer the info and so on? is that correct

[itimpi]

2 minutes ago, Leppard said:

Thank you very much for your help, so then from what I understand, I can grow my array dynamically adding as many hard drives as my computer can handle right? on the other hand I suppose it is not desirable, but can I add USB Drives to my array?

Yes - you can grow the array dynamically.

 

Although Unraid will support them it is recommended that avoid using USB drives in the main array.   the reason is that Unraid is not hot-swap compatible and cannot handle array drives temporarily disconnecting and then re-connecting with a different device ID (as USB drives are prone to do).    

[JorgeB]

4 minutes ago, Leppard said:

I can grow my array dynamically adding as many hard drives as my computer can handle right?

Correct, but if parity is already present any added disk needs to be cleared for parity to be maintained.

 

4 minutes ago, Leppard said:

on the other hand I suppose it is not desirable, but can I add USB Drives to my array?

You can but you should really avoid that, not recommended for both performance and readability reasons.

 

5 minutes ago, Leppard said:

So as Unraid can ready EXT4 drives, I suppose the way to go would be add at least one parity drive and one hard drive to the array, copy all the content from one of the drives to the array, once totally transferred, and the now empty drive to the array and connect another EXT4 … transfer the info and so on? is that correct

Yes, you can do it with or without parity, parity means you'll have redundancy from the beginning, but it can be slower writing, unless turbo write is used, and like mentioned will require all disks to be cleared as they are added.

[Leppard]

One last thing, what happens if for some reason my USB Drive where I have Unraid running fails? Is there a way I can recover my Array?

 

Also Can I install Unraid on something else that a USB Drive? can I install it on a normal SSD or HHD?

 

Thanks

 

 

[JorgeB]

Just now, Leppard said:

Is there a way I can recover my Array?

Yes, you can easily recover the array even if the flash drive fails completely and you don't have a backup, but you should have one, it can be done in the GUI by clicking on flash and backup, soon it will be possible to autobackup to the cloud with the myservers plugin.

 

2 minutes ago, Leppard said:

Also Can I install Unraid on something else that a USB Drive?

No, needs a USB flash with an unique GUID

[itimpi]

17 minutes ago, Leppard said:

One last thing, what happens if for some reason my USB Drive where I have Unraid running fails? Is there a way I can recover my Array?

 

It is worth pointing out that each Unraid array drive is a self-contained file system that can easily be read on any Linux system (or other systems if they have the appropriate file system drivers installed).