Transfer 3 Raid 5 drives to another system?

[jkelley9]

I have a NAS raid 5 system with 3 drives. I'm curious if I can transfer these drives to completely different hardware (mobo, cpu, etc) with correspondingly different software or hardware raid controller.

I don't have any OS installed on my raid 5 drives. I have a SSD that I run the OS and the 3 raid 5 drives are just for storage (of important files)

I already checked the FAQ's but didn't find anything

Thanks!

 

[Nothing_But_NAS]

This is dependent on your raid implementation:
1. If you are using hardware raid from the current NAS then you will need a similar raid controller (from the same manufacture which support the same raid logic) in the new hardware.
2. If you are using software raid (this typically offers more flexibility) then the new hardware will not affect your raid. You need to keep the same OS or use an OS which is compatible with your software raid.

 

[jkelley9]

How do I find out if one OS installation is compatible with another? My drives are currently running in a system with FreeNAS (which I believe is linux FreeBSD?), and I'm considering putting them in my windows 7 machine temporarily while I put other drives in where they used to be to test out some server stuff (that I can easily mess up, and want to use spare drives)

Thanks!

 

[jkelley9]

If I put the drives into my windows 7 PC to see if they work, will it change the array somehow? Is there any risk with doing this?

Thanks.

 

[Nothing_But_NAS]

How do I find out if one OS installation is compatible with another? My drives are currently running in a system with FreeNAS (which I believe is linux FreeBSD?), and I'm considering putting them in my windows 7 machine temporarily while I put other drives in where they used to be to test out some server stuff (that I can easily mess up, and want to use spare drives)

Thanks!

FreeBSD is not Linux. Never mix them up or the BSD/*Nix Gods will strike you where you stand.

Fun aside, FeeNAS uses ZFS file system. Windows cannot read ZFS directly, but there might be software out there to add ZFS support to Windows. You will need to do some research to find such software if it exists. If you put the drives into your Win7 system they will not be recognized and show up as unpartitioned disks. As long as you do not attempt to partition the drives on Windows, they will be fine.

What exactly are you testing and what are you trying to achieve? There might be other ways to reach your goal.