I shot myself in the foot. long story short, i wiped my existing flash drive and have no zipped backups for it, so i'm looking at starting with a fresh flash install. However, all the data on my array should be in tact. obviously i don't want to lose any data on the array starting with a new flash drive (i do have my license key) but i'm wondering what my next move should be. I did have ca-backups installed, with backups of appdata and flashdrive files (not a zip) on the array itself. i'm learning the hard way right now about keeping a zipped copy off of flash off of the array right now. 

 

What should be next?

 

Edited August 25, 20205 yr by Cpt. Chaz

if you want to just retrieve the copy of the flash backup, any linux live distro (like ubuntu or manjaro) should be able to mount the array disks one at a time (because they are xfs) and on one of them you will find the flash backup that you could extract onto the new flash drive, then make the flash drive bootable, and you would be all set.

Ah! ok, i'll start looking into that right away

wow, found my flash backup. i *thought i had made a backup before i made changes. when i looked for it i didn't see it, and thought it didn't stick. turns out it had. rookie move. thanks for the knowledge though @mkfelidae! crisis averted 

Do you have any record of your disk assignments? A recent screenshot, diagnostic, or syslog is all it would take.

 

And even if you don't have any record of your disk assignments, as long as you don't accidentally assign a data disk to a parity slot then you should be able to boot up in Unraid without affecting your data. Just don't assign parity if you don't know which disk is parity, simple as that.

You posted while I was typing.

 

Are you confident your backup has the correct disk assignments?

2 hours ago, trurl said:

You posted while I was typing.

 

Are you confident your backup has the correct disk assignments?

fortunately yes, i'm up and running now.

 

i've learned i need to be better prepared for this though. do you know of a good automated way to backup a copy of the flash zip off-array?

1 hour ago, Cpt. Chaz said:

do you know of a good automated way to backup a copy of the flash zip off-array?

CA Backup can do that to an Unassigned Device or to a remote share mounted with UD.