Guide for Hardware Upgrades?

[ryankenn]

I have a small 3 drive array (all 3TB, one parity) running in a very compact enclosure with a mITX board.  The system runs great but I want more space, and more drives so I'm changing cases.  Because it will be apart I also thought about upgrading the hardware.  My old i3 and ECS M/B aren't particularily powerful so I thought I'd upgrade.  Also the board has 4 - 6Gb/s SATA and 2 3GB/s so I had hoped to get a 6 - 6Gb/s board with a faster processor.

 

Is there a guide on how to maintain all the data on my array during the transfer?  I assumed I would try the transfer first, get the array up again then start messing with more drives.

Thanks
Ryan

[Dissones4U]

20 minutes ago, ryankenn said:

how to maintain all the data on my array during the transfer?  I assumed I would try the transfer first, get the array up again then start messing with more drives.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm pretty sure that you can build the new rig (case, board, cpu) add whatever hardware you're reusing such as power supply, fans or whatever and then just plug your drives into it directly and it will start right up, so I'm unclear on what you mean by maintaining data during transfer. Downtime will only be to remove and install whatever hardware you're reusing. Then upgrade drives one at a time once the new system is up and running...

[ryankenn]

That's what I want to know.  When you plug the drives in does Unraid know which is the Parity drive, and that the other two are data.  Or is there something I have to do to let it know.

[Hoopster]

12 minutes ago, ryankenn said:

That's what I want to know.  When you plug the drives in does Unraid know which is the Parity drive, and that the other two are data.  Or is there something I have to do to let it know.

unRAID tracks disk assignments by serial number.  If all you are doing is moving the current drives to a new case with a new MB, CPU, etc. it's just a matter of plugging then into power and SATA ports.  Your configuration isn't really changing, just the hardware running the configuration. 

 

If you are doing a new configuration of the array, you would need to make sure you knew which disk(s) are the parity drive(s) - by serial number- so you could assign them as such in the new configuration.  A screenshot of the current configuration would take care of that.

 

In either case all the data is retained.

[ryankenn]

OK that sounds easy.  I actually just posted another question about preclearing as I'm having issues with my external USB showing.

 

As for above, right now I have 3 - 3TB drives.  My plan is to move all three over, and add 3 new precleared drives.  A 10TB, and two 6TB.  Once running what I want to do is make the 10TB the new parity drive.  Then once successful preclear the old 3TB parity for use as part of the array.  Is there a guide for moving the parity from one drive to another, or do I just assign the 10TB to be parity and unassign the 3TB and the system will rebuild it on that new drive.