Cannot add existing HDDs to FreeNAS server HELP!

[Kristophski]

OK, so right now I just set up my server I had an existing server using Windows Home Server 2011 (it sucked so im looking for an upgrade). I have alot of HDDs currently hooked up to it, 3 internal and 5 external via USB. All of the HDDs are registered by FreeNAS, unfortunately I am unable to mount these drives as they show an error.

http://dpaste.com/1313564/

All drives are formatted NTFS and are full of content, I understand that the best way to include them into the server is in some sort of raid format, unfortunately I do not have that much space available to move my content format then reintroduce it.

My question is if I can see these HDD's why can't I mount them? How can I mount them without wiping the drives entirely?

 

[KMR]

:face palm:

You are playing with fire (your data). Do not try and configure this without doing more reading.

 

[Kristophski]

not going to touch it until I know more, can you point me in a direction?

 

[KMR]

Sure, here are some notes based on my limited experience. If any of the more advanced users want to correct me please do so.
FreeNAS uses ZFS or UFS; it won't add your NTFS drives. Don't try. You will probably lose your data.
Don't try and add external drives to a zpool. You will probably lose your data.

Your best bet is to (from what I can gather from your post) acquire a set of disks and create a zpool and then copy your existing data over to the new zpool. Read over Cyberjock's slideshow, it is very informative for new users.

 

[cyberjock]

wow. You need to do A LOT more homework or you are going to lose your data in a most spectacular fashion...

You should NOT use NTFS with FreeBSD/FreeNAS as a regular course of business. NTFS support is buggy in FreeBSD and is good enough to move your data from an NTFS formatted drive to a ZFS or UFS formatted drive.

You MUST format the drives to ZFS or UFS to be used with FreeNAS. This means you will need blank unused disk space. Considering your comment about not having free disks to use, I think you are done trying to use FreeNAS until you get more disks for FreeNAS.

You should NOT use USB as a standard configuration for a file server. USB hard drives do NOT provide necessary reliability to trust with a server setup. Many people have lost everything because they "had" to use USB.

All of those facts(and a lot more) are available in the forums if you do some searching.

 

[Kristophski]

I have 3.5 tb space I can free up, and about 10 tb of content, would it possible to make one of my drives UFS or ZFS whichever will allow me to set it up as a Raid-0 or striping, then transfer files over and add the other HDDs to the then existing Raid set up.

 

[cyberjock]

Nope. :(

 

[Kristophski]

Didn't think so, in a perfect world... Lol ill need to save up so I can buy a couple more HDDs and an enclosure for them. Thanks for your help

 

[KMR]

I wouldn't even get started with FreeNAS right now unless you want to make a virtual machine so you can get familiar with the interface. You need to plan a new build (even if it is with old components) out completely for this to work properly. Be careful with your data!