Am I able to use one drive then upgrade later to 4 total drives?

[Quantumm]

Unfortunately, I am unable to afford all 4 drives at this time. Is it possible to use one drive currently then later on add more drives with the ability of the one drive lost parity drive? I also use transmissionbt.com would this software work on Unraid? One more thing is that I do have a boot drive does this affect me adding more drives without having to format?

[Squid]

3 minutes ago, Quantumm said:

Unfortunately, I am unable to afford all 4 drives at this time. Is it possible to use one drive currently then later on add more drives with the ability of the one drive lost parity drive

Yes

3 minutes ago, Quantumm said:

I also use transmissionbt.com would this software work on Unraid?

Transmission is available in the Apps "Store"

4 minutes ago, Quantumm said:

One more thing is that I do have a boot drive does this affect me adding more drives without having to format?

Unraid boots from the flash drive, and then runs from RAM exclusively.  No "boot" drive in the classic sense.  Only the settings are stored on the flash drive.

[Quantumm]

So if I get a 10tb HDD fill that sucker up and add another HDD to the array, will I have to format the first one or only the second one. Also can I see a list of the app store? I do have a lot of content on my plex server currently, will I be able to switch everything over to the new OS Unraid with all my settings/cache/titles/images from the plex media server? And also transfer all of my torrents from my current transsmissionbt setup? Thank you.

[Squid]

11 hours ago, Quantumm said:

list of the app store?

A raw and unmoderated list is here https://squidly271.github.io/forumpost0.html

 

After setting up Unraid, it will look like this

 

[Kevek79]

16 hours ago, Quantumm said:

SI do have a lot of content on my plex server currently, will I be able to switch everything over to the new OS Unraid with all my settings/cache/titles/images from the plex media server?

Yes this is possible, I moved in 2018 from a linux installation on an intel nuc to docker on unraid and did not loose anything from my meta data.

 

@SpaceInvaderOne did a video about transferring Plex installations from one container to another (docker).

Not completely your case but should help enough to get your head around.

Plex2Plex by Spaceinvader One

[Quantumm]

Thank you for all of these answers. Some more questions: Where does configuration/plugins get stored? Are they stored on the USB? And if it is not stored there can I store it on my one single drive that I will have on my system? Also just to make sure if I only have one drive which is not a parity drive meaning if i lose the drive I will lose all of my data. But can i add another drive in the future without formatting my first drive and make that second drive a parity drive? And if the OS configuration/plugins is stored on the first drive, later on can i add a cache drive and transfer all of that data to that? Thank you!

[Gragorg]

 

14 minutes ago, Quantumm said:

Thank you for all of these answers. Some more questions: Where does configuration/plugins get stored? Are they stored on the USB? And if it is not stored there can I store it on my one single drive that I will have on my system? Also just to make sure if I only have one drive which is not a parity drive meaning if i lose the drive I will lose all of my data. But can i add another drive in the future without formatting my first drive and make that second drive a parity drive? And if the OS configuration/plugins is stored on the first drive, later on can i add a cache drive and transfer all of that data to that? Thank you!

Configuration can be stored on your single array drive.  Most people store their dockers (apps) and VMs on a cache drive or an unassigned device out of the array for better performance.  For the time being it will work on your single drive but will prevent that drive from spinning down.  You can have it all move to your cache if you get one down the road.

[Wody]

1 hour ago, Quantumm said:

Where does configuration/plugins get stored? Are they stored on the USB?

Yes, in the folder config/plugins.

1 hour ago, Quantumm said:

But can i add another drive in the future without formatting my first drive and make that second drive a parity drive? later on can i add a cache drive and transfer all of that data to that?

Yes, you'd stop the array (if started) and select the new drive as a parity-drive. After starting the array, unraid will tell you it will rebuild the parity-drive, which means reading all the disks and calculating and writing the proper parity.

 

If you want to move data to the cache, you would have to do that manually, and set up the mover to ignore your data. Also, data on cache drives is not protected, so you would lose it if something happened to the cache-drive.

Edited September 24, 2020 by Wody

[ChatNoir]

1 hour ago, Wody said:

Also, data on cache drives is not protected, so you would lose it if something happened to the cache-drive.

Unless the cache is setup as RAID.