I wanted to share my experience because I spent quite a bit of time troubleshooting an Unraid license/GUID issue, and I saw some people saying that the GUID couldn't be changing the way I was seeing it.

I'm running an ASRock WRX80 Creator motherboard with a Threadripper PRO 3955WX.

Originally, my Unraid boot device was a USB flash drive. I later moved my Unraid installation from the USB drive to an SSD.

That's when I started running into problems with how the license device was being identified.

At one point, Unraid was identifying the license device as TPM rather than the USB flash drive.

The GUID kept changing

The biggest thing I discovered was that the TPM/device GUID could change after seemingly minor changes to the system.

This wasn't limited to resetting the BMC.

During my troubleshooting, I found that things such as:

• Resetting the BMC
• Removing or changing a video card
• Changing certain BIOS settings
• Other BIOS/firmware changes

could result in the system coming back with a different TPM/device GUID.

I actually watched the GUID change multiple times.

For example, I saw GUIDs such as:

01-7KQ4M8Z2P6R9T1VX3N5H0CW8

and after making another system change:

01-3FJ8Q2L6V9X1M4P7R5D0BK3N

These are not my actual GUIDs and are only examples of what I was seeing.

One of the strangest things I discovered was that resetting the BMC could cause the system to go back to the previous TPM/device GUID.

So I could make a change, see the GUID change, and then reset the BMC and have the GUID change back again.

That was one of the things that convinced me that the GUID really was changing and wasn't simply being displayed differently.

The important part was that the device GUID was changing while the registered GUID remained the same. That caused Unraid to see the current device as different from the device the license was registered to, resulting in the license mismatch.

What I eventually did

My motherboard was running a very old BIOS. I was on BIOS 5.01, and I eventually updated it to BIOS 10.03.

After updating the BIOS, I discovered that I could finally disable TPM from the BIOS.

At that point, I decided I didn't want to keep relying on the TPM for the Unraid license.

I wanted to go back to using the physical USB flash drive as the Unraid boot/license device.

I moved Unraid back from the SSD to the USB flash drive and disabled TPM.

After doing that, Unraid now identifies the device as:

License device type: USB Flash

Flash Vendor: USB

Flash Product: SanDisk_3.2Gen1

That's exactly what I wanted.

What I believe was happening

The important distinction is that the BIOS update itself wasn't what was changing the GUID.

What I observed was that the TPM/device GUID could change when I made changes to the system.

The BMC reset was one of the things that could affect it, but it wasn't the only thing. Even something as simple as removing a video card or changing a BIOS setting could result in a different GUID.

Because I had moved my Unraid installation from the USB drive to an SSD and the system was using TPM for the license device, these changes could leave me with a different device GUID and therefore an invalid license.

Updating the BIOS gave me the ability to disable TPM, and moving Unraid back to the USB means I'm now using the physical USB device as the license device instead.

So my situation basically went:

USB → SSD → license identified through TPM → system changes could change the TPM/device GUID → license mismatch → BMC reset could sometimes return the previous GUID → updated BIOS → disabled TPM → moved Unraid back to USB → USB is now the license device.

I'm still working with Unraid Support to get the registered GUID situation completely straightened out, but I believe I've finally figured out what was happening.

I want to be clear that I'm not posting this to bash Unraid. Unraid Support has been helpful to me throughout this process. I'm posting this because I spent a lot of time trying to understand why the GUID kept changing, and hopefully this helps someone else who runs into the same situation.

If you're having an Unraid licensing issue where the device GUID keeps changing, check what Unraid lists as the "License device type." In my case, seeing TPM was an important clue.

TL;DR

I moved Unraid from USB → SSD. The license ended up being identified through TPM. I discovered that BMC resets, removing a GPU, and even certain BIOS setting changes could result in a different TPM/device GUID.

Resetting the BMC could also cause the system to return to a previous GUID, which let me reproduce the behavior.

I eventually updated my very old motherboard BIOS from 5.01 → 10.03, disabled TPM, and moved Unraid back to the USB.

Now Unraid identifies my SanDisk USB flash drive as the license device instead of TPM.

Hopefully this helps someone else who runs into the same problem.

I just have them lying around and have since i built my server. I mostly use my server for plex and immich. Other specs are:

Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. Z690I A ULTRA LITE D4, 32gb ddr4 ram, 2 1tb nvmes (1 for cache, 1 for appdata), 2 18tb hdds, and an i5-12400.

Not actually sure my motherboard can even use them without additional adapters tbh. Thanks for any advice!

I've been running an Unraid server for about a year. It’s holding essentially all of my data (photos, personal projects, media, etc), so I want to get opinions on my backup strategy and how it can be improved.

At the moment, my build consists of two 12tb data drives, one 12tb parity drive, one 4tb drive thats out of the array for daily backups (its mostly app data right now but plan to use it for incremental backups for my project share). My backup is two 12tb drives that I keep in the office and take home once a month to backup my data drives.

I'm using a UPS, I run monthly parity checks and periodically run SMART checks on the drives.

I know I'm missing the "3"... and actually, also the "2" of "3-2-1" (this was a stressful sentence to write). But how is my setup so far? What are the biggest weaknesses and how can it be improved?

Hi, my current config of HDDs is:

4 (parity) x 4 x 3 x 2

I've recently bought some new drives (8+4tb), and plan on selling my old ones. I'm now, of course, trying to be careful with the changeover process, and my NAS only has 4 SATA slots. Would this be the best way to do it?

1. Introduce 8tb drive as parity. Remove existing 4tb parity drive, and run Parity-Sync.
2. Once Parity-Sync is completed, remove the 3 and 2 TB drives, add previous 4TB and new 4TB, run Data-Rebuild.

My only concern is that this seems like a convoluted way of doing things. Is this the expected way to do it? Thanks in advance :)

I have been relying on community apps everywhere a community app existed, and Docker Compose for services that didn't already have a community app. However, after the recent Immich updates broke things (simple fix, but it did draw my attention to the fact that Docker Compose is Immich's official installation method for unRAID, even over the community apps), it made me question my reliance on community apps.

How heavily do you rely on community apps?

Building out my 2nd all flash Unraid.
Want to try the DOM route.

Looking for recommendations on which one I need to buy.

I saw the one on Amazon doesnt work on Unraid since it apparently has no GUID for the license.

I saw several on eBay by ATP. Is this the one I should be going for?

edit: thank you everyone for the responses the community has been extremely helpful and given me exactly what I’m looking for

I have a small 512GB m.2 drive that I have as my internal boot drive now. Seems like a waste to have an internal m.2 slot dedicated to it. I was wondering if I could move the m.2 drive to an external usb-c enclosure, and free up the m.2 slot for a bigger drive later. Seems like a backstep to go to USB again, but the m.2 drive should hold up alot better than a USB thumb drive.

Am I a genius? Am I an idiot? Am I treading where only gods and angels dare?

B550m ds3h micro ddr4 died during the hurricane. Need to replace. Newegg has for $122 usd.

The amd ryzen 5 5600gt still good as is memory.

Should I just swap out or can anyone suggest an upgrade that would benefit my unraid server?

Thanks all, back to the chainsaw.

I currently have a das with 2 drives and a functional Plex running. I bought 2 more hard drives and want to transition to unraid. Long story short can I build out unraid on a new mini pc outside of my current das, then just move my das over once I understand how it works? I also want to run some other docker things that I will be trialing so that I can learn without impacting Plex. Am I going to be making things harder on myself doing it this way? I'm smart but not necessarily computer smart yet. I can learn but also I'm a busy dad. Thanks in advance.

I've been avoiding doing anything as I have several apps on my server that are using Docker Compose Manager, and I have organized my full Docker screen using FolderView2. But these plugins have been deprecated for quite some time now:

https://preview.redd.it/ef5lbvfxa5kh1.png?width=789&format=png&auto=webp&s=7f8872c643854b52e820a24da11f31ab5a186a45

How would you recommend replacing these, especially as I'm actively using them?

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.

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 of 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.

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!

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?

I'm setting up a new 4-bay RAID 5 unit and I wanted to figure out if these Seagate 30TB EXOS M hard drives are CMR or SMR ? I was told to steer clear or SMR but the product literature isn't clear about what it is. Thank you in advance!

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1905376-REG/seagate_st30000nm004k_exos_m_internal_hard.html