I was about to build my home unraid server.  My 12 bay norco case and 2u power supply just arrived....

 

I planned to buy 3x 2TB drives to build a test unraid box.  Now with drive  prices, I have to improvise.

 

Currently, I have 2x 2TB in a raid 1 in another box that is almost full.  I have another 1.5TB drive that is unused.  So I was thinking if i could build it for now with those 3 drives, I would have 3.5TB useable to get me by til the drives come down.  Is it possible to build an array with a drives or drives that contain data?

 

Thanks

So after some more research, I see that all drives must be formatted.  So now I wonder if I could break my raid 1....build unraid server out of one 2TB and a 1.5TB ...Copy data from left over Raid 1 disk.  Add Leftover raid 1 disk to unraid...

Yes, you should be able to do that

RAID1 is incredibly resilient, remove a drive and it should all still work perfectly - the only thing you will notice is a message saying something along the lines of "omg disk gone wtf replace." The old server will work perfectly, although unprotected.

 

Currently, I have 2x 2TB in a raid 1 in another box that is almost full.

 

The issue you are going to have is if you have more than 1.5TB of data on your old box, as your 2TB drive will have to be the parity and your 1.5TB drive will have to be the data drive. This means that when your unRAID box is first operational your max storage capacity will be 1.5TB and you need to move ~2TB of data to it. I hope you have another 500gb you can spare on your mum/dad/sister/girlfriend's computer 

 

The only other option I guess would be to not have a parity drive and once the data is copied across to the unRAID box, use the 2TB drive you had left from your RAID1 as the parity drive. You'll be unprotected for a while here as well- just don't drop your drives and it should be fine.

Building without a parity drive sounds like the best solution for right now.

 

I will likely go that route.  I have a 12 bay norco hott-swap case with a 2u PSU already purchased.  In January, after xmas, I will likely finish my build.  If drives have not come down, I will have to do as you suggest

 

thanks