Some Paranoia / Safety Theory

[shazza6887]

Hi All,

Hope everyone is staying safe,

 

I have had my unraid server going for well over a year now, 6 x 8tb Seagatte Ironwolf drives with 1 of them being a parity drive. I have had a failed USB boot once before but after some instruction here it was fairly easy to get going. I now backup my flash drive with the montly parity check.

 

I was just dwelling on some things, what to do in certain scenarios etc. Maybe this will help me or someone else out one day (Hopefully not),

 

These scenerios are really to know if i can recover data, rebuild safely etc if, the pc dies and i want to take the existing array as it is and put it in another pc, by replacing either a data or parity drive. I may have to even build a new pc to add more drives as i am currently at 69%.

 

When i built this pc i did not really know what i was doing and i just plugged in all the drives, did not note down any numbers, seriels etc.

 

1, Should i take a snapshout of all my drives on the Dash and keep that photo / with numbers and drive order somewhere or no need? Do i shut the server down and pull out each drive noting the seriel and which sata port it is plugged into?

 

2, If pc failed / built a new pc does doing the above become redundant anyway?

 

3, Obviously if either the parity or one of  data drive fails, that when i would have to find the drive in question with the corresponding number on the dash in the pc to replace it etc? Is it a case since i never wrote down the numbers and where the drive is located for that number i will have to go through them if that time came anyway?

 

I hope these question make sense and sorry to probably ask questions that have been answered a million times over.

 

Cheers

[itimpi]

In principle switching to new hardware is as simple as plugging in the drives and booting of your existing USB stick.  Everything should come up just as it was on the old hardware.   The exception is if you are running VMs with hardware pass-through as the pass-through settings will need to be changed to match the new hardware before such VMs will run successfully.

 

You should ensure you have a backup of the contents of the USB stick and that it is updated any time you make a significant change.  You can download a zip of the contents by clicking on the flash drive in the Unraid GUI and selecting the backup option frim there.

[shazza6887]

5 hours ago, itimpi said:

In principle switching to new hardware is as simple as plugging in the drives and booting of your existing USB stick.  Everything should come up just as it was on the old hardware.   The exception is if you are running VMs with hardware pass-through as the pass-through settings will need to be changed to match the new hardware before such VMs will run successfully.

 

You should ensure you have a backup of the contents of the USB stick and that it is updated any time you make a significant change.  You can download a zip of the contents by clicking on the flash drive in the Unraid GUI and selecting the backup option frim there.

Yes i do this once a month but to be honest i dont have anything really advance on the server just use it to house my  data. In terms of a failed drive etc would the only way to idenity the drive be via the serial and then manually looking for that drive in the array to do something about it?

[ChatNoir]

The serial number is the way to go but it is ofter difficult to read and you are often not in the best condition with your system has a problem.

One easy way is to use the plugin Disk Location :

 

 

Replicate the disk location of you case on the plugin and note what drive is in each location.

You can create various type of setup and mix several.

 

You can then know quickly where to look for the issue.

 

Here is an example with my 3 data drives, 1 parity and 4 pool drives on the setup screen and on the dashboard.

 

 

[trurl]

11 hours ago, shazza6887 said:

Should i take a snapshout of all my drives on the Dash and keep that photo / with numbers and drive order somewhere or no need? Do i shut the server down and pull out each drive noting the seriel and which sata port it is plugged into?

Instead of a photo of the Dashboard, what you want is a printout of Main. That will show all the disk assignments with their serial numbers. Only the serial number assigned to a slot is important, doesn't matter which port it is plugged into.

[JonathanM]

11 hours ago, shazza6887 said:

when i would have to find the drive in question with the corresponding number

There is no escaping the need to see the serial numbers on the physical drives at some point. My advice is to label / sharpie / paint pen the last 4 of the serial number on a portion of the drive that is exposed.

 

You can memorialize that elsewhere if you like, the disk location plugin is handy, but at some point you will have to be able to point to the physical drive in question, and the less you have to disturb to get there, the better.

 

Hot swap bays are ideal, because you can get to the drives without touching the cabling, but lacking that, you need a way to ID and replace a drive without tearing apart the whole rig.

[shazza6887]

All great advice ty!

 

Can someone tell me where i would find the print part on the main tab?

 

With the need to see the seriel numbers at some point, obviously as long as i take the printout of the main, just leave it be until i need to tamper with it right? I think i am comfortable and confident moving forward as it seems help is there if you need it for sure

[trurl]

46 minutes ago, shazza6887 said:

Can someone tell me where i would find the print part on the main tab?

Assuming you are accessing the webUI from a browser on another computer, then you just use the print capability of that browser.

[shazza6887]

On 8/24/2020 at 10:59 PM, trurl said:

Assuming you are accessing the webUI from a browser on another computer, then you just use the print capability of that browser.

Did this ty, i guess i will just keep going and hope for best and just deal with whatever comes my way!

 

Thanks all