Migrating Controllers

[ConorABC]

Hi, I've been using Unraid for a few weeks on a Dell PE2900, which is quite old but seems to run Unraid fine.
I am using as a NAS and running a small webserver in a docker container to serve static pages.

The server currently has a PERC 5/i controller, which only operates in raid mode. To get around this, I set up each drive to be its own raid-0 array. This works fine, but the controller does not pass serial numbers and model number info (or smart info) to Unraid, so it is hard to tell which drive is which.

I was able to identify which drives go into which slots, but if I need to replace a drive or change the configuration, it will be unnecessarily difficult. Not to mention what do I do if the controller dies.

 

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Now for the Unraid question, from what I have found from searching here and the internet here is what I have pieced together.

Once I have the new controller installed and all the drives hooked up, I need to run a parity check, then click "New Config", then assign the data/parity drives to the same slot they were in previously, and check "parity data is already valid".

Does this sound correct?
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Also, I know this is beyond Unraid, but does my plan of buying a sas hba, and using adapters to connect the existing backplane (SFF-8484) to the new controller sound like it will work? or am I missing something? I am planning on building a replacement server for this as the PE2900 gulps down electricity, but in the meantime if I can get this working I would be happy for the moment :)

[trurl]

12 minutes ago, ConorABC said:

Once I have the new controller installed and all the drives hooked up, I need to run a parity check, then click "New Config", then assign the data/parity drives to the same slot they were in previously, and check "parity data is already valid".

Does this sound correct?

Won't be possible to run a parity check on the new controller before New Config since Unraid won't recognize your disks so will not even know which disk is parity. You can do parity check before changing hardware. 

[ConorABC]

I typed that wrong, I meant run parity check *before* i install new controller, then install controller, new config, etc.

 

Thanks! I am going to try to piece all of the parts i need to order together and get started.

[JorgeB]

There's a chance that after the move all data disks will be unmountable due to an invalid partition, if that happens you can rebuild one by one, like this: