Using disks with existing content

[dansumption]

I have just got myself an N4100+ and a 1Tb drive. I would like to use this and three existing 500Gb drives to build a RAID 5 array. However, the existing drives already have content on them which I want to copy to the server. Is there any way of doing this?

[vinnienl]

As far as I know this isn't possible. You should copy your data to another location. I know it isn't easy with data amounts of this size. What you want to do is possible with a NAS which supports RAID-level migration (=changing RAID-config without formatting drives) and RAID-expansion (adding drives to RAID without formatting). In that case you could empty one drive by transfering all data to the other 3 disks and place this one in your NAS-device (other than N4100 because it doesn't support it). When this is added in you network you could tranfer the contents of a second disk to you NAS, after which it can be added to the RAID too. Repeat it with all drives, and change from RAID0 to RAID5. Correct me if I'm wrong, this stuff is new to me as well, but I was looking for a storage solution so I've been reading lost of information about RAID-related stuff. But hardware which supports RAID-migration and RAID-Expansion is much more expensive so I've chosen the N4100+ as well

BTW, maybe you already know, but if you don't:
RAID5 (and I think all other RAID-configs too) only supports disks of similair size. It works if you have 3x500GB+1x1000GB but you can only use 500GB of your 1000GB. So that will be 4x500-500(because of RAID5)=1500GB. If you don't need more, it's not a problem but if you want more space I recommend buying 750GB or 1TB disks. By doing this you can also build a RAID5 array and then moving your data of your old disks to it.

[dansumption]

Thanks - I was afraid that might be the answer, but hoped it wouldn't. Ditto on the combination disk sizing. Ah well... looks like I have my work cut out for me trying to move this data around...