Migration from Win10 to UnRaid

[Farfar]

Hey! I'm new to the forum, so sorry if I chose the wrong topic or is not formatting my post correctly.

 

I want to migrate from Win10 to UnRaid while upgrading my storage by doubleing the size and have 1 drive for safety.

I have 2 HDDs that are Striped in BIOS and then used as a single drive in Win10. I use a M.2 for the operating system. I've bought 3 more drives and a USB for migration to UnRaid. 

Will I be able to;

1. Plug in the UnRaid USB

2. Boot through the USB

3. Setup the 3 new drives in UnRaid

4. Transfer the files from the old Stripe to the new pool

5. Add the old drives to the new pool

6. Use the M.2 for cache(and therefore clear out the old operating system)

 

I don't have access to external drives in any way for temporary storage, it's just simply to much space. I have a backup plan that I've set in motion, which is to upload all my files to the cloud and then download them again when my new storage pool is setup in UnRaid.

But I'd hope not to take these drastic actions, it takes a very long time to do so(suprise suprise).

 

I hope I was clear enough with my question, this is mearly a thought I had that I hope you can say will work, or help guide me on another solution.

[trurl]

23 minutes ago, Farfar said:

I have 2 HDDs that are Striped in BIOS

So is this some sort of hardware RAID controller in the computer?

[Farfar]

Just now, trurl said:

So is this some sort of hardware RAID controller in the computer?

It's plugged in to the motherboard and then setup as Stripe in BIOS. No extra Raid card.

[JonathanM]

It's very likely that you will have to set up a windows VM to be able to read the striped set. 99% of motherboard RAID controllers are not hardware based, they rely on drivers that probably aren't available in Unraid to be able to read them.

 

If that is the case, you would need to be able to pass that controller through to the VM, and use another controller for your Unraid disks. Depending on the specific motherboard, that may or may not be possible, or may need another HBA plugged in to a PCIe slot.

 

This whole exercise would be MUCH easier if you could temporarily set up a second PC to run Unraid and get the data copied across the network.

 

Regardless, the risk to your data during this kind of operation is not small, and the normal advice of needing backups is especially important for you.

 

I know you said local backups are out of the question, but I'd urge you to reconsider before breaking down the windows box.

 

What sizes are each of the drives you currently have, and how much data do you have?

[Farfar]

8 hours ago, jonathanm said:

It's very likely that you will have to set up a windows VM to be able to read the striped set. 99% of motherboard RAID controllers are not hardware based, they rely on drivers that probably aren't available in Unraid to be able to read them.

 

If that is the case, you would need to be able to pass that controller through to the VM, and use another controller for your Unraid disks. Depending on the specific motherboard, that may or may not be possible, or may need another HBA plugged in to a PCIe slot.

 

This whole exercise would be MUCH easier if you could temporarily set up a second PC to run Unraid and get the data copied across the network.

 

Regardless, the risk to your data during this kind of operation is not small, and the normal advice of needing backups is especially important for you.

 

I know you said local backups are out of the question, but I'd urge you to reconsider before breaking down the windows box.

 

What sizes are each of the drives you currently have, and how much data do you have?

I currently have 2 8TB drives and they are about half full, I've bought 3 more 8TB.

I do have a desktop(Win10), but when I said I had no option it's because I don't nearly have the space on it to do the transfer.

 

But I was thinking the following may work, that I haven't thought about before;

1. Setup 2 new drives on the desktop, doesn't need to be in raid, I can split the data if needed

2. Transfer the data from the the old Stripe on the server

3. Undo the BIOS raid on the server

4. Setup UnRaid like I planned before with 3 drives, 1 will be the safety drive

5. Transfer the data from the desktop to the new and fresh server

6. Move the 2 drives from the desktop to the server and add them to the UnRaid pool

 

Could this work? This will mean that only 1 of the operating systems on the server will need access to the controller, and neither UnRaid nor a Windows VM would need to read the Stripe somehow.

 

[JonathanM]

Migration plan sounds reasonable. I still don't see a local backup plan being implemented though. Unraid (or RAID) is not a backup. It only protects from drive failure. Accidental deletion, file system corruption, ransomware attack, etc all require a second copy of your files somewhere.

[Farfar]

5 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

Migration plan sounds reasonable. I still don't see a local backup plan being implemented though. Unraid (or RAID) is not a backup. It only protects from drive failure. Accidental deletion, file system corruption, ransomware attack, etc all require a second copy of your files somewhere.

Sweet, thanks for the help!

The majority of the space is non important files, just a big hassel to recover if lost. Any files that are important is enough for me to have on multiple computers in my home and up in the cloud.