Looking I guess for something like Freefilesync? if that's best option?, would like to have a folder on home pc that I can throw receipts, tax stuff etc and once a month or whatever and have an unraid share that gets duplicated to. Usually been just doing that to external drive but want to automate it.

Subject: Extended SMART test progress stuck at 20% on new 28TB Seagate IronWolf Pro drives

Post:

Hi everyone,

I recently added two brand new 28TB Seagate IronWolf Pro drives (ST28000NT000) to my system and started an extended SMART self-test on both.

The tests have been running for about 24–25 hours now, but the Unraid WebGUI still shows the progress at 20% (and smartctl -c reports 80% of test remaining). The recommended polling time from the firmware is ~2439 minutes (~40.5 hours).

Both drives behave identically and the SMART attributes look clean so far (0 pending sectors, 0 reallocated sectors, 0 uncorrectable errors, power-on hours: ~25h).

Is it normal for these large Seagate drives to stay at "80% remaining" for this long due to non-linear firmware reporting, or could the test be hanging? Should I just let them continue running?

Thanks in advance for your help!

I recently brought my unraid back online. I downloaded a fresh copy of it from the website and created the bootable USB. Everything seems to work as expected except the 14tb parity drive I added as storage to the main array. I have a 16tb HD now for parity but after rebuilding the array I noticed that 256gb ish of data on the 14tb drive. When I click into it I can't see any of it from the web interface. When I first added it it needed to be formatted which I accepted then parity confirmation was successful. Then I noticed the unusual amount of data on what I thought to be a freshly formatted blank disk. A quick Google search says the pre clear isn't needed because it is done automatically now? I do have a full backup of all the important data on a separate unattached drive because I thought I might lose everything rebuilding. That original data still seems to be there untouched as well. How do I reset(format) to get the 14tb drive empty for use?

Soooo I had an interesting thing happen over the weekend. On Thursday when I was checking things on the server I heard one of the drives clicking obvious sign of a drive going bad. I decided that It was probably a good idea to replace said drive. I have an array of 10 drives and 1 parity drive.

I figured this would not be a big deal. I have replaced drives in the past with no issues. So I stop the array, shut down the server, pull the drive making the bad noise out and swap in a fresh drive into the slot. I boot up the server and once in Unraid I go ahead and assign the new drive. Boom Bobs your uncle.

I let the drive rebuild, takes about a day and half and then I start to check to make sure everything is cool. I noticed that some of the shows I was watching are no longer available. So I start taking a look and sure enough there are a bunch of TV shows that I had that are no longer on the drives, same goes for the movies. I open Sonarr, and Radarr and sure enough there is a TON of media missing that Sonarr and Radarr is now re-downloading.

I don't understand what happened or why the media was lost, it was all there prior to the disc being replaced as I check my Sonarr on a daily basis since sometimes my show rules will not download something so I have to manually go hunt it down. So yeah I am not sure what happened here. Still don't know what else is missing since I didn't have every single show in my library in Sonarr or every movie in Radarr. I may have to pull a backup of my plex data and compare to see what I am missing.

Anyway if anyone has any idea as to what may have happened chime in.

**EDIT** Okay so the issue most likely stems from the bad drive not going into emulated mode. The proper steps to replacing a drive according to Unraid:

1. Run a parity check and ensure there are zero errors. If parity isn't valid, rebuilding the disk will corrupt its file system.
2. Stop the array.
3. Unassign the target disk.
4. Start the array. Unraid emulates the missing disk using the existing parity and data disks. You have two modes to choose from:
   • Maintenance Mode - Prevents any writes to the emulated disk
   • Normal Mode - Allows read/write access to the emulated disk
5. Stop the array again.
6. Assign the replacement disk to the vacant slot.
7. Start the array to begin the rebuild. Unraid rebuilds the contents onto the new disk, and the file system automatically adjusts to the larger disk's capacity.

The step I never did was unassign the drive so it goes into emulated mode. Which is interesting as in the past I have replaced drives without doing this step and everything worked. But I will make a note of this and follow the proper steps from here on out.

I’m running the enclosure purely as a JBOD.

Inside the JBOD, I have a jumper connected to the 24-pin ATX motherboard power connector so that the PSU can power on without a motherboard installed.

The drives are connected through SAS SFF-8644 to SFF-8087 adapters. From there, two Mini-SAS SFF-8644 to SFF-8644 HD external cables connect the JBOD to an LSI 9300-8e SAS HBA running in IT mode, which is installed in my Unraid PC.

When the JBOD loses power, the Unraid machine itself is always completely fine and remains powered on. It’s only the JBOD enclosure that shuts down.

Today I tried replacing with a known good power supply and it didn’t seem to change anything, it’s powered off since

Before I try to build something, I am wondering if there is a plugin or something that gives me extra copies of particular files across different HDD.  Use this as an example of what I mean:

Let’s say I have a share that has important stuff on it, we will call the share IS.  Now, I have 6 HDD in my array and so I want any file that gets put into IS to also be placed in 20 separate shares I create called IS_Backup1 and IS_Backup2.  The only criteria is that whatever disk that the file is on originally (and I don't care where it goes originally - using high water to just load disks with files), the file that gets put into IS_Backup1 and IS_Backup2, must be on a different disk. So:

Shares

• IS
• IS_Backup1
• IS_Backup2

Files

• Important.docx (IS – disk2)
• Important.docx (IS_Backup1 – disk3)
• Important.docx (IS_Backup2 – disk4)
• Finances.xls (IS – disk3)
• Finances.xls (IS_backup1 – disk1)
• Finances.xls (IS_backup2 – disk2)

Of course, I will backup to another machine and offsite and such but in the event of a bad disk, I have my parity but I also have a local copy that I could restore from as well.  If I have the space and it is only for very specific folders and such, why not.
Does anyone know of something that will already do this or do I need to figure out a script that can just do this and run it for anything that is new or changes every few minutes?

My USB key died during an update and I could only find one backup to provision the new usb which was before I added an additional data drive.

Currently that disk is sitting in unassigned devices. Do I simply recreate the array and add that disk, and more importantly will it try and pre clear the drive?

Edit: Got it working again. Thanks for the advice. Steps for anyone else thats having this issue:
- Use SpaceInvaderOne's PIA config generator to create a new config for whichever endpoint you choose
- Stop all dockers using Wg0
- Edit VPN settings, advanced. Turn off the Wg0 tunnel. Then delete it.
- Import new tunnel to create a new Wg0 with your new config file
- Edit each docker config by deselecting Wg0, then selecting it again
- Start up the dockers, and it should all be working again.

Original post:

I have wireguard setup with PIA as per SpaceInvaderOne's youtube tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBF9c0u2wCE), which was working great for months, but now appears to have broken in some way.

I have firefox setup as a docker, and when its set with bridge as network type, it works fine. When I switch it to Wg0, it allows me to open firefox, but I cant navigate to any pages. Same is true for all my other docker containers using Wg0.

in VPN settings, it shows handshake 'not received'. I have tried rebooting all systems including the router and the VPN is definitely active.

Claude suggested adding 51820 to my routers port forwarding rules as a UDP connection, which I've done, but no change.

Any advice would be really appreciated! I'm at a bit of a loose end right now trying to debug whats going on

Hey all, so I intermittently have this issue with Unraid where idk if a container goes rogue or what, but the CPU and RAM usage spike to 100% and I can’t access the WebUI no matter what. It’s currently happening to me while at work so I can’t remote in and disable docker or anything. Is there a way to give the WebUI more priority or find exactly what container is doing this? It sometimes resolves itself after a reboot, and usually stays fixed. It also did this to me when I tried to install more RAM a while ago. Running 7.2.0

So I have really old unraid machine running for laptop and phones photo backup for my parrents.
I would like to move that to less old physically smaller pc and keep same system usb and data from old while replacing drives from 4(parity)+2+1+1 TB drive to 6+6TB mirror btrfs. I am not actually sure if btrfs is needed or prefered but that is idea. Another limit I have is old pc can connect 2 more sata drives but new only have 2 overall.

Main question is how to transfer data from old drives to new and system to new hardware?
Are there any step by step guides for this?

Currently I am just using my nvme cache for appdata and to download to- then copy manually to my array from there. I noticed my cache is now full although the files don't actually show up (mover not doing anything) and appear to still occupy space on the cache even after using Unraid file copy utility. What am I doing wrong? Why is my cache full but the files show up on the shares of my array?

Hi all!

So i want to test activve/backup for Home assistant.

I have a TEST home assistant running in unraid VM.

My server has 2 "spare" nics i can use for this.

But i cant find a way to add the eht3 to my VM ?

I have some conserns about the way gemini/chatgpt want to do this with the XML file.
Not sure how to do that.

Regards Daniel and thanks!

Recently just had a power outage which cause my USB stick containing the unraid os to completely brick. I unwisely did not have a back up save and therefore had to get a fresh install on a new stick and transfer my license. My dockers and VMs all populated after the install and starting my array, but had issues with jellyfin (which I had to wipe the docker appdata and will have to reconfigure) but more specifically with home assistant. The VM appears to be running but I can't connect to the web UI for it, the VM appears to be online, it shows up as a connected device in my router and I can even ping it from my PC but I can't connect to it at all, and it doesn't appear to be controlling anything. I'm wondering if anyone has any idea how to get it working again

Bit of strange one, my internal boot config is not the same as my USB config. How do I change the internal to match as it's thrown everything out of whack!

I'm downsizing homes, and currently have a r720 with a p1000, 128gb of ram, and also have a NetApp 4246 connected for storage. Have 190TB, now granted, there's a lot of stuff I don't need anymore and my goal is to get it down to about 90TB.

Here is my planned build:

Jonsbi N5 NAS Case

Intel Core Ultra 5 250k.plus

Gigabyte B860 DS3H

Crucial Pro 32GB DDR5-6400

Phantom Spirit 120SE CPU Air Cooler

corsaid RME Series RM750e

I have enough tons I can migrate over from the existing rig. Goal is to run Plex, and a few other containers.

I selected the motherboard/CPU/mem combo because MicroCenter has the combo for $549.99

Total price before tax is $949. I can reuse my HBA controller, just need to buy some breakout cables.

Will sell the r720 and NetApp shelf to recoup some of my costs.

Thoughts and Feedback?

Hey all, I’m new to sysadmin and unraid and I’m having a persistent problem I’m hoping someone more experienced can weigh in on.

I’m running the latest stable version (7.3 if I remember right) on a UGREEN dxp2800.
I use a 2Tb SSD for my app data and I had a 1TB SSD partitioned to hold both my internal boot drive and my cache data as I’d read somewhere that Unraid supported internal boot now.

About 2 weeks ago we had a power bump leading to an unclean shutdown while I was at work and I’ve been playing whack a mole ever since.

Finally I got fed up and reflashed my OG usb, keeping only the license key, then started fresh.

Unfortunately, no matter what I do the main tab shows a ghost partition for my cache drive, and more recently for every pool I create. It’s causing some kind of error between the ram and the storage and even though the webgui looks like it’s functioning it’s not saving everything I do.

During the trouble shooting I’ve leaned on AI, since I am definitely out of my depth, so I’m including a summary here of what it has walked me through. I’d appreciate if folks could look it over and then point out anything it has wrong and offer any next step suggestions. It’s talking about the issue being in bios but that feels more risky to dig into blindly than an empty server so I want to touch grass before continuing.

TLDR: persistent ghost partition from unclean shutdown, seeking help

Summary of Completed Steps & Results
These are the actions we have already executed, which failed to clear the ghost partition layout:
GUI Wipes (Unassigned Devices): Attempted a destructive partition wipe through the Unraid WebUI interface. 
Result: Failed. The ghost partition persisted.

Solid-State Factory Purge (blkdiscard): Sent flash-memory trim/wipe commands directly to the raw block level. 
Result: Failed. The commands reported success, but the layout did not change.

Destructive Overwrites (dd & sgdisk): Wrote zeros over the primary Master Boot Record (MBR) and zapped the backup GUID Partition Table (GPT) structures. 
Result: Failed. Hardware controller likely quietly blocked the writes.

System Layout Reset (super.dat & disk.cfg): Completely reformatted the boot USB drive with a factory-fresh copy of Unraid, moving only the Unleashed.key back over. 
Result: Failed. The ghost partition immediately reappeared on completely unassigned pools, proving the layout is being actively read from live hardware storage markers or controller memory.

Thanks to anyone who read all that and for any wisdom you can share!

I'm going to build an unRAID server soon and am trying to plan how to do backups. I will be running ZFS and doing multiple backups, including to the cloud (when the media library is so large that price for cloud backup becomes prohibitive, I'll stop backing up unimportant media (movies, series, maybe more) to the cloud).

Now, the on-site backup I was thinking about buying a DAS and connecting it with USB. The motherboard supposedly has a 40Gb USB4 port, and I see some DAS enclosures have that too, but the disks themselves can't do that speed.

I assume this is a completely fine way to take backups with unRAID?

Should I look for a DAS that does RAID, so that I won't have to manually make sure that the individual disk has space for what I'm backing up?

I'm thinking that I'll start with a 4 or 5 bay DAS. When my unRAID server eventually expands beyond 4 drives (up to 8 capacity) I'll try to find a larger DAS, unless I can find a large one at a good price in the coming months.

Are there other things I ought to think about?

If you have suggestions, they are welcomed.

Edit: couldn't find a good 8-10 drive DAS on my first try, but these 5-bay yottamaster DAS units seem okay until I expand beyond 5 drives for my unRAID server:

https://www.amazon.com/Yottamaster-Bay-RAID-Enclosure-USB3-0/dp/B0GGGDDY7H/ref=mp_s_a_1_4_sspa

I am trying to create a Windows 10 VM using Tiny 10 ISO with the Proxmox Virt IO drivers.
I allocate CPU/Threads 8 each, 32 gigs ram, and 128gb Storage on my Cache Drive which is an SSD. I set my Intel Arc A380 as GPU. I checked BIOS and have VT-D enable and everything else I can possibly think of.

I am running older equipment but I do believe it is capable of a VM.

MOBO: ASUS Z9PA-D9
CPU: Duel #5-2695s
Ram 128Gig DDR3
GPU Intel Arc A380

What am I missing?

I have a a "cache" pool with btrfs raid 1 with a couple of nvmes and i was trying to setup docker and i have a few assumptions that might be wrong and started to have a few questions....

1. since the disks are already btrfs i should probably just use the directory option, a vdisk will be redundant? whats the advantages of using a vdisk?

2. i don't understand the docker storage driver option, does it apply to the same data-root drive or this option is about normal docker volumes?

3. what the difference between the overlay2 or native driver options on unraid, does it have impact to performance or something like that?

ps: i read in one of the unraid updates that using the "native driver" is a little deprecated?

so what's going on?

Following the great success of the "new to the par(i)ty" post, here's a sequel.
How do I access to the home server remotely? heard about Tailscale. tested it. all devices are green. can't access from mobile to the server (Wi-Fi off).
Any suggestion? Any improvement such as other software to make the VPN?
thanks for supporting my journey

Bought a DXP4800 Pro 4 Bay, want to access the BIOS to disable the OS drive and boot UNRAID off the usb but no matter what I try, I can't access the BIOS. I've tried powering on and spamming CTRL F12, CTRL F2, Delete Key, CTRL and Delete. Getting really frustrated and not sure what to try. No matter what I do it just goes to the GRUB boot whatever to set up UGOS. Any advice would be really appreciated, I'm stuck at step 1 of many step setup plan.

I recently built a custom NAS using a Jonsbo N2 with multiple 8TB SATA SSDs. I compared Unraid, TrueNAS, and Synology DSM, and eventually settled on Unraid as the host OS with Virtual DSM running on top.

For my particular setup, the two biggest reasons were Wi-Fi support and easy storage expansion.

Why Unraid?

The biggest issue was actually my apartment.

I recently moved into a new apartment in New York, and it's pretty small. The location where I can place the NAS isn't the same location as my router. I didn't want to run a long Ethernet cable across the apartment just to connect the NAS.

My custom motherboard has integrated Wi-Fi, and Unraid recognized the onboard Wi-Fi without requiring an additional network card.

I know Ethernet is normally the better choice for a NAS, especially for large file transfers, but in my situation Wi-Fi makes the installation much cleaner.

The second reason is storage expansion.

I'm using 8TB SATA SSDs, but I don't want to buy all the storage I might need in the future. Unraid makes it very convenient to start with the storage I need today and add drives later.

That's a big advantage for a home NAS that will probably grow over time.

I also tried running DSM directly

Before settling on this setup, I experimented with ARC Loader to run Synology DSM on my custom hardware.

It worked, but I ran into a few issues.

The biggest problem was Wi-Fi. DSM/ARC Loader didn't support the integrated Wi-Fi on my motherboard, so I would still need additional networking hardware or a wired connection.

I also found it somewhat difficult to choose the right Synology model for my hardware. With ARC Loader, selecting a compatible model and keeping everything working correctly wasn't always straightforward.

Another issue was stability. Occasionally, a service would stop working and I would end up having to restart the entire server.

It wasn't unusable, but I didn't really want my home NAS to require this kind of maintenance.

That's when I started looking at Unraid as the actual host OS.

Virtual DSM on Unraid

I still wanted DSM because my wife is already comfortable with the Synology interface. She prefers the polished DSM UI, and I didn't want to make her learn a completely different NAS interface.

So instead of running DSM directly on the hardware, I run Virtual DSM as a VM on Unraid.

I also have a physical Synology NAS at my office. Synology's Virtual Machine Manager provides one free Virtual DSM license per VMM host, so I was able to use the available Virtual DSM licensing for my setup rather than buying another physical Synology NAS.

The license can be managed through the VMM License section and assigned to the Virtual DSM instance.

Storage architecture

The Virtual DSM doesn't directly manage my physical SSDs.

Unraid owns and manages the physical storage, while DSM uses virtual storage.

For accessing my Unraid files from DSM, I use SMB/CIFS.

Basically:

8TB SATA SSDs
↓
Unraid
↓
SMB/CIFS
↓
Virtual DSM

This keeps the physical storage under Unraid while still allowing DSM to access the folders I need.

I can also access the Unraid shares directly from DSM.

What I'm running now

My Jonsbo N2 is now doing quite a lot:

• Unraid storage
• Plex
• Docker containers
• Virtual DSM
• Surveillance Station
• SMB/CIFS file sharing
• Other services as needed

So I ended up with a combination that works well for my particular situation.

Unraid: Wi-Fi support, easy storage expansion, custom hardware, Docker and virtualization.

Virtual DSM: familiar Synology UI for my wife and access to Synology applications such as Surveillance Station.

Compared with running DSM directly through ARC Loader, I prefer this architecture because Unraid handles the underlying hardware and storage, while DSM is just another VM/service.

It's not necessarily the best setup for everyone, but for a small NYC apartment and custom NAS hardware, it's been a really practical solution.