Upgrading unraid and new hardware at the same time

[magistratee]

Hello.  I've been using unraid 4.73 for yearssss and haven't really done much because it served my needs for media storage. I finally decide to upgrade because of all the plugins available. I want to upgrade to the newest unraid and at the same time I will transfer all my hard drives to a newly built pc.  I just have a few questions for this.

 

UPGRADING FLASH

At this current time I still want to use my old flash drive. I am not sure if there is a process to backup my flash drive.  Do I just copy and paste if on my pc for now? My unraid version doesn't have the backup flash in the GUI.  Also I read something a while back about running 2 flash drives (in RAID1?) in case one fails.  Is this still possible?

I read that I have to do a clean install because of my older unraid. Does this mean cleaning my current flash, install new unraid on flash from pc, and then transfer contents from old flash drive back?

 

TRANSFERRING DRIVES

I want to transfer everything without clearing out all my drives. Do I just need to transfer my drives to the new pc and unraid will set it up as it was? What is the process for this without losing or wiping any of my data drives?

I currently have 12 drives (parity, data, cache) in my system which has additional connections through sata pci cards and ide pci cards (i know its old..).

 

 

Thank you.

 

Edited April 30, 2020 by magistratee
wording

[trurl]

14 minutes ago, magistratee said:

I am not sure if there is a process to backup my flash drive.  Do I just copy and paste if on my pc for now?

yes

 

15 minutes ago, magistratee said:

I read something a while back about running 2 flash drives (in RAID1?) in case one fails.  Is this still possible?

I've not read that and I don't think it was ever possible. Even if it were I am sure it would be more trouble than it's worth.

 

18 minutes ago, magistratee said:

I read that I have to do a clean install because of my older unraid. Does this mean cleaning my current flash, install new unraid on flash from pc, and then transfer contents from old flash drive back?

Here is the upgrading wiki:

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/Upgrading_to_UnRAID_v6

 

There is really nothing from V5 that you want to keep except your license .key file, and possibly your disk assignments. No addons for V5 are compatible.

 

24 minutes ago, magistratee said:

TRANSFERRING DRIVES

V6 will accept your drives with all their data and it will be able to read and write them just fine, but you will be using an old and deprecated filesystem. Converting a disk to a new filesystem requires reformatting it so you would have to move the data elsewhere as you converted each. There may be some issues with your controllers depending on what they are.

 

Another possibility would be to use new drives which could already be setup with a new filesystem, and copy the data from the old drives. Newer drives may give as much benefit as newer hardware.

 

There is no longer a free version of Unraid, but when I started with V4.7 there were already different levels depending on the number of disks. If you have unlimited license then it should be fine.

 

 

 

 

 

[magistratee]

2 hours ago, trurl said:

yes

 

I've not read that and I don't think it was ever possible. Even if it were I am sure it would be more trouble than it's worth.

 

Here is the upgrading wiki:

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/Upgrading_to_UnRAID_v6

 

There is really nothing from V5 that you want to keep except your license .key file, and possibly your disk assignments. No addons for V5 are compatible.

 

V6 will accept your drives with all their data and it will be able to read and write them just fine, but you will be using an old and deprecated filesystem. Converting a disk to a new filesystem requires reformatting it so you would have to move the data elsewhere as you converted each. There may be some issues with your controllers depending on what they are.

 

Another possibility would be to use new drives which could already be setup with a new filesystem, and copy the data from the old drives. Newer drives may give as much benefit as newer hardware.

 

There is no longer a free version of Unraid, but when I started with V4.7 there were already different levels depending on the number of disks. If you have unlimited license then it should be fine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the reply. You mentioned v5 but I am currently using v4. This should not matter correct?

 

Is unraid v6 using a new filesystem? What is it?

The current one on mine on v4 I believe is ReiserFS if I remember correctly.  I assume it is better to convert to the new filesystem?

Do all the drives have to be only 1 type of filesystem on the new UNRAID? 

 

I do not have spare hard drives to copy all my drives and start new. Is it possible to upgrade with old file system then convert each disk individually one at a time?  I only have 1 spare hard drive to store enough data for maybe 1 drive at a time.

 

 

Thanks

 

 

[trurl]

14 minutes ago, magistratee said:

You mentioned v5 but I am currently using v4. This should not matter correct?

There was a change to the folder/file permissions between V4 and V5. This is discussed in that wiki here:

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/Upgrading_to_UnRAID_v6#New_Permissions

 

20 minutes ago, magistratee said:

Is unraid v6 using a new filesystem? What is it?

The current one on mine on v4 I believe is ReiserFS if I remember correctly.  I assume it is better to convert to the new filesystem?

Do all the drives have to be only 1 type of filesystem on the new UNRAID? 

https://wiki.unraid.net/Upgrading_to_UnRAID_v6#File_systems

 

21 minutes ago, magistratee said:

I do not have spare hard drives to copy all my drives and start new. Is it possible to upgrade with old file system then convert each disk individually one at a time?  I only have 1 spare hard drive to store enough data for maybe 1 drive at a time.

That is how most people did it. You just need an empty drive you can format to a new filesystem, whether a spare, or just moving files off a disk already in the array. Then move files to it so you empty another drive, reformat that empty one, repeat as necessary.

 

The unBALANCE plugin can help with that.