Any deals on Unraid?

[CSIG1001]

Does unraid offer any specials during the holidays?

[BRiT]

All the free posts you can handle in the forums.

[CSIG1001]

3 minutes ago, BRiT said:

All the free posts you can handle in the forums.

talking about deals going on sale to buy the software?

Do they ever put it on sale?

[BRiT]

Not for a long while, maybe decade ago with a 2 for 1.

 

 

 

 

[CSIG1001]

while i got you on here  since posts are free like you said

 

if i create a unraid server whats the best way to copy over my data  ? attaching a hard drive external to usb 3.0 ?

[ezhik]

I'd have to vouch for keeping it as is. You get a lifetime license (as of now), which means you get upgrades to MAJOR versions free of charge. 

 

Now if you want to change that and get a discounted price PER VERSION, I'd advise to think again.

 

For now, this is the BEST deal you can get.

 

Cheers.

[CSIG1001]

46 minutes ago, ezhik said:

I'd have to vouch for keeping it as is. You get a lifetime license (as of now), which means you get upgrades to MAJOR versions free of charge. 

 

Now if you want to change that and get a discounted price PER VERSION, I'd advise to think again.

 

For now, this is the BEST deal you can get.

 

Cheers.

Cool story

So whats the best way to copy over large sums of data to a new unraid server? Since posts are free you should answer this question

[FreeMan]

19 hours ago, CSIG1001 said:

whats the best way to copy over large sums of data to a new unraid server?

If you're populating your unRAID server with new drives, you can simply migrate data across the network from its current location(s).

* Build the server once

* move all data across the network

* It's the minimum of shutting machines down, moving hardware, starting machines up

 

If you're building your unRAID server primarily with disks that are currently in use in other machines: 

1 get your server up & running with a minimum of hardware (i.e. 1 drive free, no larger than the single largest drive you intend to put in the server).

2 Pull the first drive from its current host,

3 plug it directly in via SATA to the unRAID server

4 boot the server and mount the drive with the Unassigned Devices plugin (MAKE NOTE OF THIS DRIVE'S SERIAL NUMBER)

5 copy from UD mount point to the array

6 Power down the server

7 Pull the next drive to be added from its host machine

8 plug it into the server via SATA

9 boot the server.

10 Stop the array, go to "Main" and assign the PREVIOUSLY moved disk (step 5) to the next empty slot in the array (using the serial number you wrote down previously)

    * NOTE: If you pick the wrong drive you will WIPE OUT ALL DATA on it in the next step

11 Start the array - unRAID will begin to clear the data on the newly added drive (the one you copied data from in step 5)

12 Repeat steps 2-11 for as many drives as you have to add to the server

 

The most important thing is at step 10. If you add the WRONG disk (i.e. the one you just added to the array that's still filled with data, not the one you'd previously 

 

*Quality of answer is guaranteed to be commensurate with the price paid for it.  

[trurl]

20 minutes ago, FreeMan said:

...

 

If you're building your unRAID server primarily with disks that are currently in use in other machines: 

 

...

One thing I would add to this when you are planning to reuse disks that have data on them. You must always have another copy of anything important and irreplaceable. Parity is no substitute for a backup plan.

[CSIG1001]

34 minutes ago, FreeMan said:

If you're populating your unRAID server with new drives, you can simply migrate data across the network from its current location(s).

* Build the server once

* move all data across the network

* It's the minimum of shutting machines down, moving hardware, starting machines up

 

If you're building your unRAID server primarily with disks that are currently in use in other machines: 

1 get your server up & running with a minimum of hardware (i.e. 1 drive free, no larger than the single largest drive you intend to put in the server).

2 Pull the first drive from its current host,

3 plug it directly in via SATA to the unRAID server

4 boot the server and mount the drive with the Unassigned Devices plugin (MAKE NOTE OF THIS DRIVE'S SERIAL NUMBER)

5 copy from UD mount point to the array

6 Power down the server

7 Pull the next drive to be added from its host machine

8 plug it into the server via SATA

9 boot the server.

10 Stop the array, go to "Main" and assign the PREVIOUSLY moved disk (step 5) to the next empty slot in the array (using the serial number you wrote down previously)

    * NOTE: If you pick the wrong drive you will WIPE OUT ALL DATA on it in the next step

11 Start the array - unRAID will begin to clear the data on the newly added drive (the one you copied data from in step 5)

12 Repeat steps 2-11 for as many drives as you have to add to the server

 

The most important thing is at step 10. If you add the WRONG disk (i.e. the one you just added to the array that's still filled with data, not the one you'd previously 

 

*Quality of answer is guaranteed to be commensurate with the price paid for it.  

 

Thanks for the mature  and intelligent reply to my question.  I wish there were more people like yourself on this forum.  I am sure there is but you made me more  confident setting up my server.  I think what I will do because my data is very important to me and yes I know it will take a few days but this is what I need to do to move 64tb and 8 drives.  I might just populate my 24 bays with the hard drives , will have two 12tb hard drives for redundancy and mostly will be 8s, 10s, and  a few 12s to fill the rest of the 22 bays.  Once the server is setup connect via jbod to my old 8 bay enclosure and start doing a copy.  Will unraid be able to see the data as a jbod to copy to the array?  I really appreciate the steps you gave me but knowing me I might screw it up by forgetting which serial number etc and end up wiping my data?    Or am i really making this out to be harder than it is?

[CSIG1001]

28 minutes ago, trurl said:

One thing I would add to this when you are planning to reuse disks that have data on them. You must always have another copy of anything important and irreplaceable. Parity is no substitute for a backup plan.

my second plan is to copy over the data 64tb to the unraid array and then store the 8 hdds in my closet inside a special case. however once my array goes over 100tb  i will most likely have to rely on the array and 2 parity disks to save me since I will have no way to keep a second backup.. I guess i could invest in Tape solutions or waiting until 2023 when we have 25tb drives available.  Just around the corner. We are supposed to have 100tb by 2026 

[trurl]

Just now, CSIG1001 said:

my second plan is to copy over the data 64tb to the unraid array and then store the 8 hdds in my closet inside a special case. however once my array goes over 100tb  i will most likely have to rely on the array and 2 parity disks to save me since I will have no way to keep a second backup.. I guess i could invest in Tape solutions or waiting until 2023 when we have 25tb drives available.  Just around the corner. We are supposed to have 100tb by 2026 

I don't have a complete backup, but I do have 2 copies of anything I consider important and irreplaceable offsite. You don't have to backup everything. You get to decide what qualifies as important and irreplaceable.

[CSIG1001]

photos are most important as well as documents.  everything else is replaceable on the internet but would take time to replace.  I think i should be ok with my array and having 2 parity disks. I will be hooking up a 1500watt Universal power supply as well . 

[trurl]

14 minutes ago, CSIG1001 said:

Thanks for the mature  and intelligent reply to my question.  I wish there were more people like yourself on this forum.

Typically the forum is a lot better than this thread devolved to. Please consider reporting a post to the moderators, instead of responding in kind. Also note that almost everyone on the forum, including the moderators, are just users like yourself. Lets all try to help each other.

[CSIG1001]

sure thing I will do that next time I get patronizing answers to my questions .

 

I am really stuck on setting up 64gb of ram so I can play with VMs but not sure what else I can do with more than 32gb of ram for my server?

 

Also i have 2 SSDs as cache and already have my  dell modded firmware for jbod and a intel expansion sas ready to go.  The server will be mostly  for file storage and plex. But think 64gb is a nice solution right now to play with but was not sure what else i can do with it

[ezhik]

48 minutes ago, CSIG1001 said:

sure thing I will do that next time I get patronizing answers to my questions .

Remember that it works both ways. Be respectful asking questions as well.

[ezhik]

Hardware wise, you'd want to make sure you use an HBA that is fully compatible with unRAID. General recommendation is to go with LSI 9211-8i or 9211-16i (or similar series using the same chipset). 

 

Migrating a large sum of data can be time consuming and I would advise (at the beginning) not to use the cache drive(s) for the initial share(s) setup as and go directly "through" using 'reconstruct write' for md_write_method.

 

Depending on what interface you will be using for the data transfer (usb2 vs usb3.x vs sata2/sata3), you might be better off using network to transfer it such as scp or rsync.

 

I generally use rsync to do the transfers, this allows to pick-up interrupted transfers and/or only transfer files that have changed.

 

Cheers.

Edited December 27, 2019 by ezhik

[ezhik]

1 hour ago, CSIG1001 said:

my second plan is to copy over the data 64tb to the unraid array and then store the 8 hdds in my closet inside a special case. however once my array goes over 100tb  i will most likely have to rely on the array and 2 parity disks to save me since I will have no way to keep a second backup.. I guess i could invest in Tape solutions or waiting until 2023 when we have 25tb drives available.  Just around the corner. We are supposed to have 100tb by 2026 

 

Look into duplicati and jottacloud. You can get unlimited storage for about $99/yr.

 

Make sure you backup duplicati db to ensure you can restore the encrypted backups.

 

[CSIG1001]

2 hours ago, ezhik said:

 

Look into duplicati and jottacloud. You can get unlimited storage for about $99/yr.

 

Make sure you backup duplicati db to ensure you can restore the encrypted backups.

 

Cant i just use crusader with a gui? 

[CSIG1001]

Is binhex new version better

[ezhik]

10 hours ago, CSIG1001 said:

Cant i just use crusader with a gui? 

You sure can. These are different solutions however, duplicati allows you to perform remote (cloud) backups over API, encrypted and on schedule.

[ezhik]

10 hours ago, CSIG1001 said:

Is binhex new version better

binhex uses archlinux as the base image. not sure if it is newer or not.

[ezhik]

In either case, follow this guy, he has best tutorials in town:

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZDfnUn74N0WeAPvMqTOrtA 

[FreeMan]

I used duplicati for a while. It's slow. No, I mean S. L. O. W. Onsite server-to-server backup that went from source to switch to source took days to complete an initial backup of 2TB. It's also frustrating as it doesn't give much feedback on what it's doing, so a daily backup runs and it just kinda sits there. Then it started popping up warning messages but I could never decipher where the actual warnings were coming from or why I was getting them. (To be fair, I didn't submit a log or ask any questions on their forum about it.)

 

I've since switched to using rsync by following this excellent tutorial:

 

My initial backup took about 2 days because I kicked off a piece in the morning then went to work. It was done before I got home so there were several hours that it was sitting doing nothing before I could start up the next piece. That one was done before I got up the next morning, so it had been sitting for a while again before I started the 3rd piece. Plus, I'm in complete control and I know what it's doing at all times. Of course, I'm in complete control and if I muck something up, it's all on me...

[CSIG1001]

Thanks for all the feed back on how to move files.. this has me alittle nervous to be honest. However wouldnt it be better just to move files from a hard drive enclosure directly attached to my unraid box and use duplicate gui? Also i would think using cache drives in raid would also help .  I know this will take a few days . But now that i think about unraid in the future would somehow become obsolete especially when 100tb drives will be out in 5 years. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to transfer 1 petrabyte of data from one computer to a unraid box if one can only get 50mb/s transfers  ...  maybe i am overthinking this obstacle i might face just to move 64tb