(SOLVED) New Build Questions, Adding Files

[stepmback]

A little background first. I am coming off of Flexraid (better late than never). I have about 16 drives of varying size 2tb-4tb full of data (movies, pictures, etc). I am a newbie to Unraid but have been messing around with it on a workstation for the last week... so I think I understand the basics.

 

I just bough 4 new 8TB drives to add to the new array. I am in the process of pre-clearing the drives (taking longer than I thought). I plan to have 2 8TB parity setup. I also bought a new 1TB samsung ssd for the cache drive.

 

My plan is to get the 8tb mounted and going in the array so I will have 16TB of free space to work with initially. To copy the files I plan to add one of my old drives to the server and use Krusader to copy files to my user shares.

 

Questions

1. Given that I will be spending several days copying files from older drives, what is the fastest way to do this? Should I even bother installing the cache drive now or wait until all the files are copied?

2. Should I have parity running at all while I copy files over to the various days or set it so it does not run and then run when all the files are copied? Any issue with copying files while parity is running... I plan on try to copy as close to 24/7 as possible.

 

Any guidance is much appreciated.

 

 

Edited July 17, 2020 by stepmback

[itimpi]

The fastest way to copy on an initial setup is to not bother with the cache and without the parity drive assigned.    You can then add the parity drive and set up how you want the cache drive to be used after this initial copy.  Not having parity assigned means copies run significantly faster but your files are not yet protected so you have to decide if this suits you.

[stepmback]

That is what I thought. I will keep two of the 8TB drives set aside to add to the array as parity after all the files are moved over. I think I will be safe for a couple of days and plan to only use drives that are precleared.

 

Thanks for you your feedback.

[trurl]

43 minutes ago, stepmback said:

I think I will be safe for a couple of days

Whether or not you have parity you still need backups of anything important and irreplaceable.

[stepmback]

I have run into a problem with copies.

 

I have added by old flexraid disks to the server however when I click the mount button for these discs only PPU2 and DRU3 portion of the disc mounts. If I go into Krusader I only that portion of the disc which is full old flexraid files junk meta files I no longer need. All the media files appears to be in the WDC xxxxxx portion of the disc. If I take the disc out of the array and attach to to a separate windows machine I see all the media file, so the disc looks good. How can I mount this portion of disc in unassigned?

 

Here is a screenshot:

Edited July 4, 2020 by stepmback

[trurl]

Perhaps ask on the Unassigned Devices support thread and post your diagnostics.

[stepmback]

Ok. I posted on the unassigned thread. I think I figured out how to do diagnostics.

 

spanky-diagnostics-20200704-1737.zip

Edited July 4, 2020 by stepmback

[stepmback]

To close the loop on this. I was told that : "Unraid (Linux) does not recognize a valid partition on the first partition of those disks."

 

My only option appears to be to copy over the network from my windows machine.