Hello Everyone,
I am a NAS noob in need of some expert advice on how to migrate many years of data stored across multiple disks and PCs into one consolidated machine running FreeNAS. I'm still in the planning stages, but I'm hoping to gain as much knowledge to make this project go smoothly.
I currently have about 8 "storage" disks varying in size from 320gb to 1tb spread out over 4 PCs in my home, all at about 70% capacity or more. A lot of that is manual "back-up" of data... just direct copies of everything from drive A on PC 1 to drive B on PC 2... I know, I know, worst waste of space ever, but I didn't know any better back then.
My primary question is, what is the best plan of attack to transfer data from these disks and into a NAS while still utilizing the same physical disks in the new NAS machine.
Will I be able to start with two clean disks in say volume 1, and transfer data from other disks onto that volume, then create a new volume 2 with disks with those new free disks? Can I continue this type of pattern progressively until I've created the highest capacity volume possible?
Impossible? Too much of a hassle?
Should I just start out with buying new 1tb disks and forget about reusing the old ones (this seems like such a waste to me)?
Should I just setup each disk independently? Having them together in a single machine that is networked is improvement enough then it is now.
Any suggestions are much appreciated.
Thanks
I am a NAS noob in need of some expert advice on how to migrate many years of data stored across multiple disks and PCs into one consolidated machine running FreeNAS. I'm still in the planning stages, but I'm hoping to gain as much knowledge to make this project go smoothly.
I currently have about 8 "storage" disks varying in size from 320gb to 1tb spread out over 4 PCs in my home, all at about 70% capacity or more. A lot of that is manual "back-up" of data... just direct copies of everything from drive A on PC 1 to drive B on PC 2... I know, I know, worst waste of space ever, but I didn't know any better back then.
My primary question is, what is the best plan of attack to transfer data from these disks and into a NAS while still utilizing the same physical disks in the new NAS machine.
Will I be able to start with two clean disks in say volume 1, and transfer data from other disks onto that volume, then create a new volume 2 with disks with those new free disks? Can I continue this type of pattern progressively until I've created the highest capacity volume possible?
Impossible? Too much of a hassle?
Should I just start out with buying new 1tb disks and forget about reusing the old ones (this seems like such a waste to me)?
Should I just setup each disk independently? Having them together in a single machine that is networked is improvement enough then it is now.
Any suggestions are much appreciated.
Thanks