Unraid - changing hardware.

xrapidx

xrapidx

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For the guys using UNRAID - have you ever changed hardware?

I'm thinking of getting an Icydock MB455SPF-B - popping it in my old desktop - and running UNRAID - (I also need a few drives).

Then when the time comes to expand, get another MB455SPF-B, and new case, motherboard, etc?

My main concern is loosing all my data when I change hardware.

This is going to be quite important data, wife's photos for the last 10 years, our wedding photo's/video's - etc.

And of course, my media.
 
1.) It doesn't address the question.
2.) I do not want to backup 40TB.
 
The unRaid license and configuration are all on your flash drive.
if you going to use the same flash drive you shouldn't have a problem, boot up using the drive and reassign the drives.
 
you will be fine. unRaid is not raid. even if you cannot rebuild the array, all the data is accessible on the individual drives.
 
i just had a harddrive crash and didn't even know about it, was still streaming media from the missing drive without skipping a beat. this is why it is recommended that you run scheduled parity checks and send email alerts.
 
sorry for the multiple posts. backup your confid data (flash drive) and get a second product key in case your flash drive fails
 
Hmm...

How does the parity drive contain all the information of the other drives?

e.g.

If you have
Drive 1 - 5
and Drive 6 is parity

If Drive 1 goes - do you loose any information at all?
 
xrapidx said:
Hmm...

How does the parity drive contain all the information of the other drives?

e.g.

If you have
Drive 1 - 5
and Drive 6 is parity

If Drive 1 goes - do you loose any information at all?
Click to expand...
It doesn't contain all the info of the other drives, it uses some fancy maths to rebuild the data on failed drives instead. If you lose one drive and the parity drive is still fine then you can recover everything, if the parity drive fails as well then you lose the data on the failed drive. If two non parity drives fail then you lose the data on both.
 
Nduimiso said:
It doesn't contain all the info of the other drives, it uses some fancy maths to rebuild the data on failed drives instead. If you lose one drive and the parity drive is still fine then you can recover everything, if the parity drive fails as well then you lose the data on the failed drive. If two non parity drives fail then you lose the data on both.
Click to expand...

Hold on, so if two drives fail, and the parity drive is fine, do you still loose the data on both drives?
 
xrapidx said:
Hold on, so if two drives fail, and the parity drive is fine, do you still loose the data on both drives?
Click to expand...
Yip, unraid allows for 1 drive to fail. But you need to compare it to normal RAID as well. Normal RAID setups are striped which means the data is spread across all drives, if you have 10 drives in a RAID array then the data from a single file will be spread across all 10 drives, that means if one drive in normal RAID fails you lose absolutely everything. Now if you add a parity drive then the failure of one drive is ok, you can still repair it. If two drives were to fail then you would lose everything on all drives. Of course adding more parity drives to normal RAID will allow more drives to fail with you still being able to recover the data, I think the max is 3 now. Unraid is unstriped and thus the data isn't spread across all drives, the data resides on one drive which means that drive failure only affects the data on the failed drive. That is the main advantage of unraid.

Also note that with striped data all drives have to spinup to provide the data as opposed to unstriped where only the drive with the data your are seeking needs to spin up. Thus unstriped should result in less wear and tear on drives and less chance of failure.

This is just a simple explanation between raid and unraid, Normal RAID comes in many different configurations so you just need to determine which on is best for you, except RAID 0, never choose RAID 0.
 
Thanks - didn't quite think of comparing it back to RAID and the loss of more than one drive. So I guess its still a viable option.

I guess the more drives you add, the greater the change of two failing at the same time. I'm currently running with everything on multiple drivers in multiple machines, and maintenance is a hassle - haven't had a drive fail, but maintenance is a hassle.
 
xrapidx said:
Thanks - didn't quite think of comparing it back to RAID and the loss of more than one drive. So I guess its still a viable option.

I guess the more drives you add, the greater the change of two failing at the same time. I'm currently running with everything on multiple drivers in multiple machines, and maintenance is a hassle - haven't had a drive fail, but maintenance is a hassle.
Click to expand...
True, but I'd say the chance of failure is smaller using unraid compared to Raid. The really important data you could backup up to another machine as well.
 
xrapidx said:
Thanks - didn't quite think of comparing it back to RAID and the loss of more than one drive. So I guess its still a viable option.

I guess the more drives you add, the greater the change of two failing at the same time. I'm currently running with everything on multiple drivers in multiple machines, and maintenance is a hassle - haven't had a drive fail, but maintenance is a hassle.
Click to expand...

Yeh, recon that's what I'll do. Going to start off with three drives, and increase to about 10 as I move stuff off my already full drives.

Just need to see if any of my old PCs still boot.
 
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