Setup FreeNAS whilst keeping data on existing drives

[Nookster]

Hi all,

Was thinking about setting up a FreeNAS box to share all my stuff over my network. I was wondering if there is a way to setup FreeNAS whilst keeping the data on NTFS drives intact. I have around 4x1TB drives and wish to set these up in FreeNAS but I need to keep the data on the drives.

Is there a way to do this? I am not worried about using any RAID backup functions as long as all the space is usable and the data is still there.

Thanks in advance,

Steve

 

[William Grzybowski]

Not really, FreeNAS cannot deal with NTFS very well

You'd be better backing up your data, making a new ZFS/UFS Volume and copying it back...

 

[Nookster]

Thanks for your reply,

In that case, is it possible to backup and add one drive at a time - otherwise I will need another 4TB to backup what I have already! :)

Thanks in advance,

Steve

 

[lrusak]

Thanks for your reply,

In that case, is it possible to backup and add one drive at a time - otherwise I will need another 4TB to backup what I have already! :)

Thanks in advance,

Steve

not really, unless you want data on individual drives instead of using raid Z. this isn't really ideal.

 

[Nookster]

not really, unless you want data on individual drives instead of using raid Z. this isn't really ideal.

But will it still appear as one 4TB drive when set up? even though it will store it on individual drives.

Thanks in advance

Steve

 

[lrusak]

No, it will appear as 4 individual drives. your best bet is to buy 2x2TB HDD's (internal or external) then transfer the data to them. Then place your 4x1TB drives in your Freenas box and setup a raidZ array (assuming this is what you want to do) you will only have 3TB of usable space and 1TB of parity this way. Then transfer your data back to the array from the drives. Return the drives to the store :D

 

[Nookster]

Haha, okay.

Thanks for your help guys


Steve