I know there are a number of topics on the subject, but still I'd like some help with my specific situation. My flashdrive died this morning. The drive is seen on a different PC, but is shown as readonly and Windows can only offer to format it. Chkdsk cannot be run, because also here Windows only suggests to format the drive.

 

Now I do have a weekly backup of the drive, however I placed this on the array itself (I know, not my brightest hour).

 

Following this guide: https://wiki.unraid.net/UnRAID_6/Changing_The_Flash_Device , I created a new flashdrive and replaced my license key.

 

Now here's where I'm stuck: the guide says it's vital that the order of drives in the array/cache/parity is exactly the same, or else data loss may occur. Now I am sure of my parity drive and my 2 cache drives. For the data disk however I'm only certain of disks 1 and 5. Disks 2, 3 and 4 I need to guess.

 

Now the guide states: 'If you do not know which disks were assigned where, create a post in the forum for further assistance.' so... here I am

 

I hope you can help me on this.

Edited August 3, 20205 yr by correctomundo

Wait for johnnie.black to reply. He's the expert with this sorta stuff.

 

Where did you read that "order of drives in the array/cache/parity is exactly the same"?

From my own experience, as long as I assign parity disk to parity slot, cache disk to cache slot and data disk to data slots then all were well. The order didn't matter for me - in fact I have rearranged disk orders many times without any issue at all.

I thought it would only cause data lost if, for example, you put data disk in parity slot.

Edited August 3, 20205 yr by testdasi

Single or dual parity ?

Please post diagnostics

Quote

From my own experience, as long as I assign parity disk to parity slot, cache disk to cache slot and data disk to data slots then all were well. The order didn't matter for me - in fact I have rearranged disk orders many times without any issue at all.

I think that this is only true in a single parity situation. With dual parity drive assignments matter as far as I know.

Single parity. I added the diagnostics file now.

 

I also thought the order of drives didn't matter, but I'm not positive this is also the case with a blank flash drive.

tower-diagnostics-20200803-1334.zip

Just now, correctomundo said:

I also thought the order of drives didn't matter, but I'm not positive this is also the case with a blank flash drive.

It doesn't with single parity, order also doesn't matter pol any btrfs pool.

Thanks for the support. Got it up and running again. I guess I'm going to restore the backup of the flash drive now I can get to it, because else I'd need to redo the passthrough settings of the GPU and USB controller and reinstall all plugins.

 

I can just copy the backup files over to the new flash drive and only keep the license.txt file, I guess?

1 hour ago, correctomundo said:

I can just copy the backup files over to the new flash drive and only keep the license.txt file, I guess?

license.txt is just the license agreement for using unraid, has nothing to do with your actual unraid license.

 

when you get unraid started again if you have your previous license key (/config/basic.key or plus.key or pro.key) on the drive unraid will show that the license doesn't match the flash drive guid and you have to get a new license key.

 

https://wiki.unraid.net/UnRAID_6/Changing_The_Flash_Device

ah, yes of course. I actually did this to get my new flash drive running. Sorry I wasn't clear.

 

Now that I can access my array again, I want to copy my flash drive backup to the new flash drive (which now has the replaced license). So what I meant is: when restoring the backup files to the new drive, I just need to keep the replaced license file '/config/plus.key', right?

You only need the config folder from the backup, except keep your new .key file.

Clear. Thanks again for the helpful responses.

i am in the same boat, is there any way to tell which drive is the cache drive? i have 2 of the same largest drives.

4 minutes ago, turn8 said:

i am in the same boat, is there any way to tell which drive is the cache drive? i have 2 of the same largest drives.

Mount them with the UD plugin in read-only mode and check contents.

1 hour ago, JorgeB said:

Mount them with the UD plugin in read-only mode and check contents.

thank you, i will try this when i am back from the office.