Migration question from Windows + Drivepool


Go to solution Solved by JorgeB,

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Hi All!

 

I've been running a NAS with Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials + Stablebit Drivepool with a smattering of 12+ different drives for probably a decade now and want to transition to Unraid using the same hardware (too cheap to buy new, plus it's a decent haswell broadwell platform).

 

My main concern is migrating the data (all on NTFS drives pooled with Stablebit Drivepool similar to mergerfs if I understand it all correctly) to Unarid's volumes after I change the boot drive.

 

So my main question is:  Can Unraid mount NTFS volumes and read files from those volumes to copy into whatever parity-backed pool I create in Unraid?

 

Thanks!!!

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After some reading, it does seems like mounting a NTFS drive is possible and slowly copying over files for the migration is doable....  has anyone else done something similar to confirm?  My plan is to free up one or two of my drives out of my drivepool and then add them into my initial unraid pool.  then mount the NTFS drives and start copying things over and free up another drive from the windows drivepool and then add that to the unraid pool and so forth.  

 

Also, just realizing that unraid has to run off of a USB drive?  so i guess that means I can potentially not have to touch my windows boot drive if something goes awry and switch back if shit hits the fan?

 

I also need to migrate some VMware VMs which i think is doable....  just have to find a good VMware -> KVM migration process.  Anyone have any recommendations?

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The only question in my mind is whether the drives in the Windows drivepool are usable outside the pool?   This is not something I have any experience of but if that is the case then an alternative approach might be needed (such as running a Windows VM under Unraid to support the drivepool drives that still being used at any point).

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The filesystem on the drives are simply NTFS. nothing fancy.  The drivepool software adds a virtual drive on top of the "pooled" drives and handles writing the files directly to disk. But ultimately, it's just writing files to NTFS.  It works similarly to mergerfs.   I can pull a drive out and stick it in another windows computer and access the files with no issues.  

 

So i guess the question is whether it's easy/straightforward to mount a simple NTFS volume in unraid to copy files from?

Edited by machineglow
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1 hour ago, machineglow said:

So i guess the question is whether it's easy/straightforward to mount a simple NTFS volume in unraid to copy files from?

Yes - as was mentioned you want to use the Unassigned Devices (UD) plugin to make this easy if they are standard NTFS.   Having said that I would still recommend that you try this out just in case there is something slightly unusual so that only windows handles the drives correctly.

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