How do I migrate my data now?

[shawly]

Hi,

so I've been running OpenMediaVault with three disks and SnapRAID. Since they were formatted with ext4 and FreeNAS can only read ext3, I just reformatted the parity disk as ext3 and gladly all my data fits on this single drive, so I copied all the data on the ext3 drive.

Today my new server board will arrive and I'll install FreeNAS, but now I need to know, how I migrate the data.

I have no fourth disk that could fit the data so I thought, I can create a RAID-Z out of the two other disks and copy all the data from the ext3 disk to the new RAID-Z array and after that I just add the ext3 drive to the RAID-Z as parity drive.

But I guess it isn't that easy, since I need three disks for RAID-Z, right?

Edit: I've read I can create a degraded RAID-Z pool with two disks and then copy the data from the ext3 disk to the pool and then add the third disk after. So it's pretty much what I asked for, right?

 

[anodos]

How are you doing backups? This is typically a situation where people would just restore from backup media. If you don't have backups then you have one more problem. :D

 

[shawly]

I'm doing daily backups of the important stuff to my external 1TB drive, but I don't make any backups of my games, movies, tv shows and anime since I find it unnecessary.
If the worst case ever happens I'll have to download and rip all my media again, I don't see a point in keeping backups of things that aren't that important to me.
So can I create a RAIDZ pool with two disks, transfer the data and add the third disk later? Like this guy says?

 

[danb35]

So can I create a RAIDZ pool with two disks, transfer the data and add the third disk later? Like this guy says?

It is said to be possible. It's not supported or recommended, basically into "here be dragons" territory. But that said, here's a thread from someone who says he's done it with FreeNAS.

 

[Ericloewe]

Edit: I've read I can create a degraded RAID-Z pool with two disks and then copy the data from the ext3 disk to the pool and then add the third disk after. So it's pretty much what I asked for, right?

Second time this week this monster pops up out of the blue.

I don't like this trend. Degraded pools are a messy thing, especially because they seem to invariably rely on a degraded RAIDZ1 vdev. I guess people with RAIDZ2 vdevs are more likely to field the expense of another drive (or two, really, since it's one beyond the extra from RAIDZ1 to RAIDZ2...).

 

[shawly]

It is said to be possible. It's not supported or recommended, basically into "here be dragons" territory. But that said, here's a thread from someone who says he's done it with FreeNAS.

Well, how else should I do it without a backup drive that's big enough for all the data? I mean, which would be the supported way?
I tried it but I didn't even get to the part where I copy my files, my server just seems to hang when I execute zpool create. But since this is not supported I guess no one will help me...

 

[depasseg]

The supported way would be to buy another disk.

The unsupported way would be to figure out how to create a sparse volume and use it as your 3rd disk so you can create the pool. then delete the sparse volume, copy your data, pray for no failures, add your 3rd disk as a replacement for your deleted sparse volume. Piece of cake!

 

[shawly]

The unsupported way would be to figure out how to create a sparse volume and use it as your 3rd disk so you can create the pool. then delete the sparse volume, copy your data, pray for no failures, add your 3rd disk as a replacement for your deleted sparse volume. Piece of cake!

Like I said, it hangs when I want to create the zpool and I have to reset my server, since rebooting doesn't really do anything..

 

[depasseg]

How are you creating the sparse file device and the pool itself?

 

[shawly]

I was doing the unnecessary "mdconfig -a -t vnode -S 4096 -f /zfs1" which was the culprit of my problem. I also created an raidz array full of sparse files and then just replaced them with the actual disks, now it works and I'm importing the data from my other disk.
After that I can just add it to my pool and the pool should become not degraded anymore, right?

 

[depasseg]

Just follow the directions: http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_storage.html#replacing-a-failed-drive

 

[cyberjock]

Oh geez... counting the seconds before "hey, I can't access any of my data anymore" thread.

 

[depasseg]

Didn't you see that "pray for no failures" step? I'm sure everything will be fine. <eyeroll>

 

[shawly]

Lol people calm down, at the moment my data is still there and it's not like I'm gonna cry about 50 movies and 2000 episodes of anime, I might shed a tear because it takes a few days to get them back, but besides that, the small amount of important data I have is backed up on multiple harddrives. :p

Edit: Oh boy, came to check my server this morning, the import stopped and only 800G of my 1.8T were transferred to my pool. Strangely enough, there is not a single error message anywhere and if I try to restart the import it says failed, also running rsync manually doesn't work, so I mounted the disk with my data und somehow the folder with my anime as well as my TV shows are empty. Seems my data was angry at me because I treated it so badly many times already, guess it had enough. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Edit: Used fsck but it seems there is not a single bad block, SMART also says the disk is fine, sooo where is the data lol? I know it was there when I copied it on OpenMediaVault. Possibly some read permission errors?

Edit: Surprise surprise, my data isn't gone, now that I finally have had the time to run an ubuntu live cd, I found out that all my anime and tv shows are still there, FreeNAS just wasn't able to read them, for god knows what reason, but for this case I made all files readable for everyone, so maybe FreeNAS will import them now correctly. :)

 

[shawly]

Can someone help me? I have no idea why but FreeNAS can't read my Anime and my TV Shows folder and I have no damn clue why, I converted the ext3 partition to ext2 but that made no difference..
The files are all readable under Ubuntu, I even set the access rights to 0777 and the owner to nobody but FreeNAS still won't read them and therefore I can't import them...

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Are you using the Import Disk function?

If that isn't working, just copy the data over the network instead.

 

[shawly]

Are you using the Import Disk function?

If that isn't working, just copy the data over the network instead.

Guess I have to do it this way, yeah..