Hi there I currently have 2x500gb disks with all my data on. Could I install freenas on a 80gb primary disk and then share the 2x500gb disks as secondary disks over the network without the need to format them etc? If this doesn't quite make sense please let me know Cheers
Unfortunately, no. FreeNAS has to format all drives before it can use them. This is something a lot of people have been asking for a long time but they still haven't done it. I can see why they haven't but it's still annoying.
I tried something similar with Openmediavault, which is similar to FreeNAS. That won't do it either - you need to 'nuke' the disc first, ridding all partitions and FAT, then allow OMV or FN to do its thing.
I've mounted already formatted drives in freenas. Unless they removed the option, as I haven't used it in awhile. The thing is though that for them to be reliable you need to use UFS. Select under disks add step preformatted and select the correct choice. Unless they have improved things don't use ntfs disks ever in freenas, it can read ok, but writing will wreck the data.
