adding data and parity drives...questions

[SPOautos]

I would like to add a data drive.....would the process be to just hook it up, boot the computer to Unraid, it shows as a unassigned disk, run a preclear, then there will be a setting in the "main" tab where I can add it to the array?

 

Then question two is more complex....I have another new drive that I want to make my parity drive and move my current parity drive to being a data drive. What would be the process for that? Would I add the new drive, preclear it, mark it as a parity, then somehow remove the original parity drive, then run a parity check so that everything is added to the new parity drive? Then once its good take the old parity drive, preclear it so its empty, then make it a data drive?

 

Also just to make sure the process.....would I swap in the new unassigned drive to parity by stopping the array, then in the "main" tab, I would use the drop down by parity and just change it to the new unassigned drive? Then the old parity would just automatically become a unassigned drive?

 

Thanks!

Edited October 16, 2020 by SPOautos

[JorgeB]

3 hours ago, SPOautos said:

I would like to add a data drive.....would the process be to just hook it up, boot the computer to Unraid, it shows as a unassigned disk, run a preclear, then there will be a setting in the "main" tab where I can add it to the array?

You just assign it to a data drive slot and start the array, preclear is optional.

 

3 hours ago, SPOautos said:

Then question two is more complex....I have another new drive that I want to make my parity drive and move my current parity drive to being a data drive. What would be the process for that?

Upgrade parity, when that's done upgrade the data drive with the old parity, again preclear is optional.

 

3 hours ago, SPOautos said:

would I swap in the new unassigned drive to parity by stopping the array, then in the "main" tab, I would use the drop down by parity and just change it to the new unassigned drive? Then the old parity would just automatically become a unassigned drive?

Correct.

[JonathanM]

11 hours ago, SPOautos said:

move my current parity drive to being a data drive.

After you accomplish that task, IMMEDIATELY take a new flash drive backup, and destroy or mark for destruction any previous flash drive backups. Reason being, if, in the fog of war, you have a failure and use an older flash backup to get up and running, it is very possible to make the array think that data drive should still be in the parity position, and overwrite it irrecoverably erasing anything that was on the disk.

[SPOautos]

1 minute ago, jonathanm said:

After you accomplish that task, IMMEDIATELY take a new flash drive backup, and destroy or mark for destruction any previous flash drive backups. Reason being, if, in the fog of war, you have a failure and use an older flash backup to get up and running, it is very possible to make the array think that data drive should still be in the parity position, and overwrite it irrecoverably erasing anything that was on the disk.

 

Thanks for that info.....what is the best way to make a flash drive backup?  After I first setup my flash drive I just plugged it in to a different compuuter and made a copy of everything on it and saved it on that other computer. I'm not really sure if that is the appropriate way or if it would work if I needed to make a new flash drive. 

[JonathanM]

1 minute ago, SPOautos said:

 

Thanks for that info.....what is the best way to make a flash drive backup?  After I first setup my flash drive I just plugged it in to a different compuuter and made a copy of everything on it and saved it on that other computer. I'm not really sure if that is the appropriate way or if it would work if I needed to make a new flash drive. 

That method works, but it's easier to click on the flash in the main GUI page and select the flash backup button.

[SPOautos]

3 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

That method works, but it's easier to click on the flash in the main GUI page and select the flash backup button.

 

Yea that was a stupid question hahaha, so simple...thanks for letting me know about always needing to redo my flash backup when I reconfigure drives. Are there any other similar situations where I would need to redo my flash backup?

[JonathanM]

1 minute ago, SPOautos said:

Are there any other similar situations where I would need to redo my flash backup?

No other with as catastrophic results that I am aware of.

 

Docker container template customizations are on the flash as well, so keeping current backups after you add new containers is good.

 

Pretty much any time you muck around in the Unraid GUI and make configuration changes, like network, containers, users, share permissions, etc, you need to make a new backup. It's just those type of changes don't tend to irreversibly erase drive data if you accidentally use an older version.