Reinstall - Avoid Data Loss

[Jath]

Hi everyone,

I am having issues with Plex where for some reason, video playback will just stop/freeze. Roku it errors out, and the web app just freezes. It seems to only happen outside of the LAN, but I've never had the issue before. No stuttering, no buffering, just errors or freezes respectively. No stress on the system resources that I can tell, and already reinstalled the Plex plugin.

Because of these issues, I am going to try reinstalling FreeNAS from scratch. I wanted to ask though how to properly avoid data loss.

I have FreeNAS installed on a USB, and I have the drives setup in a ZRAID1/2 (RAID 5) format if I remember correctly. I want to make sure that if I redo the FreeNAS install, I won't lose the data that I have on the drives. Some of it is very sensitive, and I would very much like not to lose it.

I can back some of it up on another external if I absolutely need to, but wanted to see if it was possible this way first.

Thank you for your assistance.

 

[dlavigne]

This is the very reason why the OS drive is kept separate from the storage drives. Backup your config, reinstall, and restore your config.

 

[Jath]

I had a feeling it was that easy, I just wanted to make sure beforehand so I didn't lose data.

Thanks sir.

 

[Mirfster]

Thanks sir.

That would be Ma'am/Madam/Miss/Mrs. ;)

 

[Jath]

Hahah, then thank you Ma'am. :)

 

[JDCynical]

That would be Ma'am/Madam/Miss/Mrs. ;)

That means your title needs to be fixed as well ;)

 

[Mirfster]

That means your title needs to be fixed as well ;)

Not me; was talking about dlavigne :P

 

[David3D]

In a similar situation here.

Is it acceptable as an addition safety measure to simply disengage all the drives from their respective SATA connectors during installation and config upload and then simply shutdown, plug everything back in and boot?

Or should I just reboot with fresh drive, install FreeNAS with all 24TB attached and stop being such a worry wart?

 

[jgreco]

Paranoia's good. However, you should receive plenty of warning before anything would get stomped on by the installer - in particular, pay attention to disk sizes and stuff like that.

 

[David3D]

...in particular, pay attention to disk sizes and stuff like that.

As in, make sure I don't accidentally blitz a 2TB drive that would have still been configured in RAID-Z2 had I not written the contents of a USB image to it after having selected the wrong drive by mistake?

If that's the only thing I need to worry about, I should be fine. I have a backup in case of emergency anyway. But I'd rather not have to start from scratch. :)


I have a SATA/CF card adapter as part of my server which came with a 2GB industrial CF card. Perhaps I should find a 16GB one for the sake of reliability.

Cheers!

 

[jgreco]

Yes, that's exactly what I mean.

"Should be fine" is great right up until suddenly you're not fine. Just be careful, be cautious.