moving spanned hard drives

[lampybc2]

Hi all

I have found myself an old computer and am turning it into a "media center" a while ago I picked up 2 x 4TB hard drives waked them into my computer spanned them and started backing all my dvd's onto it, I now want to swap these into my "media center" because they are spanned will I run into any trouble?
the only reason I ask is I dont really have enough space to back them up onto something else, and I dont want to keep them where they are and run em over the network because I only really want 1 computer on all the time.

cheers

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, lampybc2.

Unfortunately, I can't guarantee that it would work. Moving drives which have already been Spanned, Stripped, Mirrored etc. does not always give the desired outcome. It's really possible that they might be recognized as spanned drives in Disk Management while it says that the volume has failed, which would basically mean that you'd probably lose the data.
If you still have all your files on DVDs, perhaps you could try, to see if it works and in the worse case scenario - backup the DVDs again.

Hope that helps. Cheers!
Boogieman_WD

 

[lampybc2]

cheers mate, I had a feeling this would be the case, as you said its not a HUGE thing if I loose all the data its just DAYS and DAYS doing it all again, might be easier to buy a big external hard drive I think

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Well, you could still try it as I've mentioned, since you do have a backup. Actually there was this case a couple of days ago, the same problem only with a RAID 1 (software RAID). The drives were recognized in the new system as Mirrored but the RAID has failed. The user ended up connecting them to the old system, rebuilt the volumes and everything was there. Now that does not mean that this will necessarily work every time, so it's up to you if you decide to go for it or not and since spanning is a bit different (to say the least) it might not work at all.
Anyway, getting a larger external drive is also a good option for a backup.

Let me know if anything else comes up.

 

[lampybc2]

well I have done it I backed everything up put the 2 spanned 4TB hard drives into the new computer and BAM it worked was all there spanned ready to go couldn't have gone any smoother!!
guarantee if I didn't back it up it wouldn't have gone that well

 

[Boogieman_WD]

I know it was probably a long process, but you know how it is - it's better to be safe than sorry. Good to know that everything went better then expected.

 

[popatim]

How did you span them?
Windows - you should be fine.
Chipset raid - would only work by enabling chipset raid using the same brand chipset (intel usually works on intel, amd works with amd, marvel works with marvel chips,...)

 

[lampybc2]

How did you span them?
Windows - you should be fine.
Chipset raid - would only work by enabling chipset raid using the same brand chipset (intel usually works on intel, amd works with amd, marvel works with marvel chips,...)

just spanned them in disk management

 

[popatim]

When you install them into your new windows system, it should pick them up and work with them just fine.