Now my unRAID server is progressing I am ready to start copying my 3.5TB of data from my old NAS (a Drobo FS) to my new unRAID server.

 

Unfortunately though, my crappy Drobo FS is silly slow reading over the network; like 5MB/sec! - so the transfer would take more than 8 days!! The Drobo is faster being direct connected to a PC (via ethernet), but I only have one PC (a laptop), which can't be tied up for 8 days straight as I use it for work. So if I limit the transfer to 8 hours over night, it'll take me 24 days to do the bloody transfer!!

 

So my thought was, can I attach the Drobo directly to the spare gigabit ethernet port on my unRAID server, and somehow perform the transfer directly?

 

I am completely new to Linux, but this is what I have gleaned from the Wiki and various threads on this forum. Can someone please have a look over the following commands to see if they are correct?

 

Firstly:

mkdir /Drobo

To make a temporary folder.

 

Then:

submount //DroboFS/Shares/Drobo

To mount the Drobo share that I want to copy from, into the temporary folder.

 

Then:

unmask 000

To stop any files being written to the unRAID array as system/hidden.

 

Then:

 cp -r /Drobo/Blu-Ray Movies /mnt/Tower/Video

To transfer the folder “Blu-Ray Movies” and its contents (which has the path //DroboFS/Shares/Drobo/Blu-Ray Movies) to the share on my unRAID server (is the ‘space’ in the folder name likely to cause any problems here – do I have to show this as a different character in the console?)

 

Then:

rsync -av --stats --progress /Drobo/Blu-Ray Movies /mnt/Tower/Video

To monitor the status of the transfer.

 

Then when complete:

 umount /work
rmdir /work

To remove the temporary directory.

 

I will obviously test this all with a single small file before attempting the full 3.5TB copy, but not knowing anything about Linux, want to be sure I’m not going to cause any damage to anything, and that I have got all of the above commands correct?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

You need to either use quote marks around the name with the spaces, or "escape" the spaces by preceding them with a backslash.

 

So, for your example

Either

cp -r  "/Drobo/Blu-Ray Movies"  /mnt/Tower/Video

or

cp -r /Drobo/Blu-Ray\ Movies /mnt/Tower/Video

Many thanks yet again Joe! I will add in the speech marks as suggested.

 

Are all the other commands correct then?

If the drobo is faster when direct connected via Ethernet to your computer then I might surmise that your network might be the problem.  Assuming you are using the same Ethernet cable for connecting the Drobo to your computer there should be not much difference when it is connected to your PC vs. connected to the network.

I would rather use

rsync -av --stats --progress /Drobo/Blu-Ray\ Movies/ /mnt/Tower/Video

instead of copy as rsync may be interrupted and re-started back again.

 

 

So my thought was, can I attach the Drobo directly to the spare gigabit ethernet port on my unRAID server, and somehow perform the transfer directly?

You may have to manually bring that interface online.  IIRC by default unRAID only brings up the first ethernet interface it finds.  My motherboard has dual Intel nics and I only have one active ethernet interface.  You would also need to set an IP address.

 

Assuming your 2nd interface is eth1 you can set it's IP and bring it up using

ifconfig eth1 192.168.20.5 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

You can replace the IP address with something else, but make sure that it is not in the same subnet as eth0.  Also be sure to set your Drobo to use a different IP address on the same subnet you are setting for eth1 before you connect it.

 

submount //DroboFS/Shares/Drobo

To mount the Drobo share that I want to copy from, into the temporary folder.

Shouldn't this be smbmount

//DroboFS/sharename /Drobo

And if DroboFS cannot be found you may need to use its IP address instead

 

Then when complete:

 umount /work
rmdir /work

To remove the temporary directory.

Since you mounted to /Drobo you need to unmount from /Drobo

umount /Drobo

then delete the directory

rmdir /Drobo