Populating data filled disks on WHS

[DantesOblivion]

TLDR: Will Windows Home Server 2011 erase my HDDs if I connect any hard drives that already have data on them?

 

First time posting and a bit of a noob. And yes I did google it first. I couldnt find any satisfactory answers. Please help

 

So heres the whole story: a couple of years ago, I moved to another country and wanting to bring all my data with me, i stripped the seven WD My Books I had for data storage and stuck them inside my PC Case for easy transport. Two years later, my data storage requirements have significantly increased, though i still need to go back to the internal HDDs that used to be MyBooks. Plugging in each and every HDD separately with a USB adapter is a massive pain, as is populating the drives on the main rig 'cause my bios will just sit there trying to detect the hard drives (dont ask...the motherboard was a bad buy as far as modding the specs was concerned).

 

So finally decided to build a home server for file sharing etc and I wanted to ask if anyone here has been in a similar situation and used WHS 2011 as a solution. I know that WHS uses some sort of elvish magic to show all logical partitions under the same drive letter, which is mainly why i want to use WHS instead of a Linux box or something and I was wondering if this process would destroy my data if i tried to populate HDDs that are already filled.

 

Oh, and please, kindly refrain from providing NAS or any other solutions involving RAID. I WANT TO KEEP THE DATA I HAVE RIGHT NOW. So RAID is not an option for me. Most of the data is not THAT important, though i would rather not delete it if i could avoid it. I basically look at RAID as wasted space. (I hoard data. Its a problem. I'm aware. Stop looking at me like i'm crazy )

 

I am still in the planning stages of this build, so I would greatly appreciate any input on the hardware as well as the software including the OS.

 

So far the build specs in my head looks like this:

 

Processor : intel Core 2 Duo or similarly performing processor (i can get em cheap)

Any compatible Asus/Gigabyte motherboard (i can get em cheap)

2x2 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM (cuz i have spare ones)

one, possibly two, PCI SATA expansion card

total of seven WD Caviar Green drives for mass storage (numbers will probably increase soon)

single WD blue drive for OS

450 watt PSU

(air)cooling optimized case

Windows Home Server 2011

 

I will be running the server headless and maintaining it remotely

 

Thanks in advance LTT community