Hello peeps. Sorry for asking this since I bet its been answered before. I went through the forums but did not see anything that suggested a new user can do what I'm about to do.
I have a Home Server, several years old and running strong. The mobo is an old 4 port Sata II system with a Intel Q6600 Quad-Core running at 3 Ghz. It has an Intel PCIe NIC card because I did not like the on board Ethernet solution. Although this system is about 5 years old I think, it is doing its job including streaming, backing up clients etc without much fuss. I do not see an end to its life as of yet.
Anyway, I have two drives in the system already, a 1.5TB and a 1TB. I just picked up a 2TB yesterday from a craigslist add for $50 and he threw in two really nice Thermaltake BlacX docking stations, so it was a no brainer. Hard Drive Sentinel says I have a little over 3 years of life left in it as estimated but it runs at 100% specs. I want to add this new 2TB to the system and at the same time include the other two (1.5tb+1tb) storage drives into one large 4.5TB Pool. But here's where I get lost, or do not understand. Can I keep my data on the two current drives or do all drives need to be freshly formatted? Also, this new drive has a GPT & NTFS setup on it already, but freshly formatted. And I do not know how the others are formatted. I assume I used MBR + NTFS (I can check for sure later).
Here is the setup I want
Port 0 = 60GB SSD for OS (already running perfectly)
Port 1 = 1TB (Samsung F3 = FULL) (Pool)
Port 2 = 1.5TB (50% Empty) (Pool)
Port 3 = 2TB (100% Empty) (Pool)
I want these last three drives (Ports 1+2+3) in the pool if possible without losing data. Will DrivePool do this for me and preserve the data? Is this easy or can I get myself into some kind of trouble that I am not aware of yet? Please advise if I can proceed with my plans. I have NOT purchased DrivePool as of yet but I will once I learn that my plans will work out. I do not have any other drives to support me in transferring of files back and forth if I need to do that.
Thanks for any help and happy holidays.
Regards
Rod