Moving the system from a disk to another

[NKari]

Hello !

I have installed FreeNAS on an old disk, getting 10 years old, and I want to move my system to another, younger and faster disk. I have got a problem because this SDD drive is smaller than my old mechanical one. I'm also using a soft RAID and I can't afford to break it.

What's the better way to move the 2 system's partitions from one disk to another ?

 

[Evertb1]

Hello !

I have installed FreeNAS on an old disk, getting 10 years old, and I want to move my system to another, younger and faster disk. I have got a problem because this SDD drive is smaller than my old mechanical one. I'm also using a soft RAID and I can't afford to break it.

What's the better way to move the 2 system's partitions from one disk to another ?

Don't bother to try to move an installed FreeNAS instance to another boot device. Just save your FreeNAS config file to a safe place. Then install FreeNAS on your SSD. If that is done upload your saved config file and you are back in business again. Should take less then 30 minutes. You can read in the user manual how to execute those tasks.

And do your self a favor. Next time you have a question let us know about your configuration, how your data is organized and what version of FreeNAS you are running. Good change you get better answers that way.

 

[Scomigor]

Good afternoon, I ask for help.
The system disk with the operating system burned out, the data disk is working. I know the login password and settings, but the system backup was not given.
How can I reinstall the system on a new ssd and connect the old data disk? thanks

 

[Evertb1]

but the system backup was not given.

You need to make the system backup yourself and you should have done that before your boot device burned out. Make it a habit to save your configuration regularly. Apparently you didn't.

However not all is lost, there should be a system backup on your data disk that you can use. But you are in a bad need to read the manual. It's all in there and not all that hard to understand. FreeNAS is not a plug and play system working "out of the box". You need to do a lot yourself.

And please also read the Forum rules before your next post. They are there to make life easier for everybody.

 

[NooB2Networking]

Thanks @Evertb1 - I've got some questions related to the FreeNAS config file. I've manually saved a copy to a safe location, but I'd like to check on the automatically backed up copy within my dataset. Is there anyway to identify this file? I tried to navigate to it using the upload config (System>General>Upload Config) But I am not able to navigate to the pool directly. I am trying to identify the automatically backed up file to assure myself the config file is in there.

I am running TrueNAS-12.0-U4. Sorry I'm such a noob I don't see the relevance of including the hardware. I'm using my FreeNAS as a plex server & as an SMB share for my everyday files (centralized storage). I hope thats clear, and please take it easy on me if I've missed some critical piece of information. I am a noob, looking for help.

 

[Samuel Tai]

The auto-backed-up system configs aren't accessible from outside TrueNAS. They're in /var/db/system/configs-<system-specific hex string>/<TrueNAS release>/, where there will be a DB file for each day. However, /var/db/system is the path for the system dataset. If you'd set the system dataset to a different pool from your boot pool, then it would be possible to copy the last saved config to a thumb drive for upload in the GUI. If you didn't move the system dataset off your boot pool, you're out of luck.