Questions need answered prior to switching to freenas from a full mandriva server set

[Shadowtester]

I have a media server setup using Mandriva 2011 64bit which I am using sata port multipliers feeding 15 sata hdds for media storage. Currently I have 10 of the drives filled using XFS and JFS file systems the other 5 drives are currently formatted XFS and are empty. I run sabnzb plus, sickbeard, and couchpotato using nfs to allow my media player access the files. My questions are as follows.

1 Does freenas 8 support sata port multipliers?

2 What options are available to transfer the media files off the XFS and JFS drives onto the empty drives formatted ZFS I have 15tb of files that need transfered the empty drives will hold 10tb which will allow me to transfer 6 of the full drives at one time allowing those to be formated ZFS and hold the rest of the media files. Using nfs or samba would be a last resort due to the time required to transfer the files over Ethernet and having to setup a second Linux computer for the file transfer.

My computer hardware

Motherboard Biostar TA75M+ FM1 AMD A75
CPU AMD A8 3850
Ram Patriot 8gb DDR 3 1600
HighPoint Rocket 620 pcie SATA III controller card used for internal os hdd and dvd drive.
3 Rosewill RSV-S5 SATA 3G 2.5" & 3.5" HDD 5-Bay RAID 0/1/5/10/5+spare/Spanning/JBOD Storage Enclosure System with 120mm cooling fan/ Port Multiplier housing the 15 hard drives for media storage.

 

[ProtoSD]

2 What options are available to transfer the media files off the XFS and JFS drives onto the empty drives formatted ZFS I have 15tb of files that need transfered the empty drives will hold 10tb which will allow me to transfer 6 of the full drives at one time allowing those to be formated ZFS and hold the rest of the media files. Using nfs or samba would be a last resort due to the time required to transfer the files over Ethernet and having to setup a second Linux computer for the file transfer.

You're pretty screwed since FreeNAS doesn't support either of those filesystem types. Beside the network option you mentioned, the next best idea would be to find an intermediate OS that supports those filesystems and do your copying there. Maybe create your ZFS pool on FreeNAS, export it, boot from Live CD/DVD of *other* OS import pool, mount & copy other disks, export pool, then boot FreeNAS back up and import it.

 

[Shadowtester]

Any ideas for a intermediate os that can mount all 3 file systems preferably that I can boot from a live cd or dvd mount all the hdds and do the transfer since freenas would already be installed to create the zfs pool. That os would need to support sata port multipliers not a problem for most if not all Linux distros.

 

[ProtoSD]

You wouldn't need to worry about FreeNAS already being installed since you'd be booting from a CD/DVD. You could just unplug the FreeNAS drive also.

I haven't used Ubuntu lately, but that would be where I'd start, possibly Solaris also?