WHS drive question

[ilkhan]

Im considering moving to WHS, to the point where I have it installed on a drive but pulled that drive to go back to my current win7 install. (WHS was installed to an 80GB drive with no other drives attached)

My drive setup is pretty strange. I have roughly 2.5TB of data, a 2TB drive, and 4 WD750AAKS drives. Currently the 2TB drive has 280GB free and one 750 is 95% full.

AFAIK to add a drive to the pool in WHS is has to be empty, yes?

So the real question is, can I add a drive to the pool, reboot into 2k8, move/add/whatever the data on a drive, and then reboot into WHS without WHS going crazy?

edit: Ill add, the reason Id like WHS is to not worry about running out of space on any individual drive, as I have a couple folders that are at/near the 750GB/drive (excepting the 2TB) limit a single folder would be at if I stick with my current 7 install.

 

[jay2472000]

I had the same type of prob as you. Fresh WHS install, and pretty much 4 full drives. WHS does reformat them when you add them to the server storage pool, HOWEVER, I could add the drive, then go to my computer, cut the files, then open WHS control console, find my share folder, and paste the files. Be forewarned, sometimes WHS refused to recognize the drive in "My Computer", ( I had it hooked straight sata to mobo, external e-sata and external USB) in which case what I did was take the external drive to another PC and copy it over my network. ( Yeah, 400 gigs over 11MB/s connection hurts like hell, but I didnt have many other options ) It seemed to be pretty hit or miss as to wether it recognized the drive or not. Sometimes the "Found new hardware " wizard would all run, and I could see the new drive in device manager, but when I opened My Computer it didnt show.

Short answer, if you dont "Add drive to storage pool" it wont format it, if you do , then it formats it.

 

[ilkhan]

True, I know you can use the drive without adding the drive to the pool. But you don't get the spanned volume benefits that way. I think Im going to stick with win7, I'll revisit it when the RC expires.