So my flash drive took a dump, but I was able to retrieve my backup that CA Backup makes. I thought I was all squared away until I was assigning my drives from the txt file. I noticed that the drives I had added a few months ago weren't in that list. Turns out the backup is from early 2019. And since then I got a bigger parity drive, put that parity drive as a data drive, and also added another data drive.

 

Any recommendations for my next steps? If I can remember which drives went where before I start the array, will everything work? Or since this flash drive backup is from 2019 will it try to format the drives if I put them in the "2020" order?

 

Reddit Thread

 

Edit: Solved!

Edited November 18, 20205 yr by TheCopernicus

Assign all the drives as data drives and start the array.   The drives that come up as unmountable are your parity drives.   Stop the array and do a new config and assign the drives accordingly.

 

If you have dual parity then you're odds on going to have to rebuild parity as drive order is important.

 

If more drives come up as unmountable than you have parity drives then stop and post back here with your diagnostics and wait for assistance

19 minutes ago, Squid said:

Assign all the drives as data drives and start the array.   The drives that come up as unmountable are your parity drives.   Stop the array and do a new config and assign the drives accordingly.

 

If you have dual parity then you're odds on going to have to rebuild parity as drive order is important.

 

If more drives come up as unmountable than you have parity drives then stop and post back here with your diagnostics and wait for assistance

I only have 1 parity drive so we should be good there. What about the order of the drives? I thought that matter? What if I get it wrong before I start the array?

 

And actually I'm 100% sure which drive is my parity since it is my only 10TB drive.

Edited November 18, 20205 yr by TheCopernicus
details

1 hour ago, TheCopernicus said:

What about the order of the drives? I thought that matter?

If by order of the drives you mean connected to the same SATA ports as before or in the same drive slots in the case/cage or previous disk 1 as new disk 1 ..., in the unRAID array slots, etc., this does not matter.  UnRAID tracks drives by serial number.  All the data on your existing data drives is still intact.  Just make sure the parity drive is parity and the data drives are assigned to the array.  They may not be in the same order (disk 1, disk 2, disk 3, etc.) as they were before but the shares and data will be intact even with a new drive order.

 

You should not be prompted to format anything as the filesystem on each drive should still be intact as well.

 

EDIT: Even though it does not matter, that's why I put a sticker on the front of each drive with its unRAID slot number and drive serial number.  I just like knowing the order in which they were assigned in the array in case I ever do a new config.

Edited November 18, 20205 yr by Hoopster

29 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

If by order of the drives you mean connected to the same SATA ports as before or in the same drive slots in the case/cage or previous disk 1 as new disk 1 ..., in the unRAID array slots, etc., this does not matter.  UnRAID tracks drives by serial number.  All the data on your existing data drives is still intact.  Just make sure the parity drive is parity and the data drives are assigned to the array.  They may not be in the same order (disk 1, disk 2, disk 3, etc.) as they were before but the shares and data will be intact even with a new drive order.

 

You should not be prompted to format anything as the filesystem on each drive should still be intact as well.

 

EDIT: Even though it does not matter, that's why I put a sticker on the front of each drive with its unRAID slot number and drive serial number.  I just like knowing the order in which they were assigned in the array in case I ever do a new config.

 

Yeah I meant like the drive order in Unraid, not the physical order or SATA port order. So I started the array back up and most things look good. I can access shares and my VMs are there, but my docker list is totally empty! I think this is because since this backup was made, I moved my dockers onto an unassigned SSD. I'll have to look at how I did that and maybe retry those steps.

 

Edit: I pointed the docker settings at the right img file and docker is back! Thanks to everyone that helped!

Edited November 18, 20205 yr by TheCopernicus

Drive order is not important to parity1 - just the fact you have the same data drives in any order is sufficient.   Drive order DOES matter as far as parity2 is concerned.

 

the other thing that can be affected by drive order is anywhere you have reference to specific disks.   This could apply for instance if you have any explicit include/excludes for particular shares.   If you have never referenced disks directly to then this will not be an issue.

 

take the opportunity to take a backup by clicking on the Flash drive on the Main tab and using the backup option.    You should ideally do this any time you make a configuration change.