Setup JBOD without losing existing data

[TheKingMads]

Dear Forum,

 

I have just recently bought a raid cabinet (Icy Box IB-RD4320) which can hold up to 2 HDDs. I have two WD 3tb HDDs which I wish to use with the cabinet one is brand new and empty and the other one is almost full. The Raidsystem support raid 0, 1 and JBOD.

 

Now my question is whether it is possible to just insert the drives into the cabinet without losing any of the data on the one drive that is almost full?

 

I believe that it is best for me to use the raid cabinet in JBOD as I do not care about speed or redundancy. I mainly care about keeping my existing data. I am unsure of whether inserting the drives will erase everything on the full drive?

 

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

/King

[Oshino Shinobu]

It will erase the drives when you put them either in RAID or JBOD. You'll have to move the data from the drive to a temporary storage device, set up the drives in the box, then transfer the data back over. 

 

It's a pain, but I don't think there's a way to keep the data on the drive. 

[TheKingMads]

Thanks for your quick answer @Oshino Shinobu!

 

What if I were to set up the raid cabinet with my one empty drive in JBOD mode first. Then copy my data to it from my other dirve before adding it to the cabinet?

[Oshino Shinobu]

Thanks for your quick answer @Oshino Shinobu!

 

What if I were to set up the raid cabinet with my one empty drive in JBOD mode first. Then copy my data to it from my other dirve before adding it to the cabinet?

It would still erase the drives when they're both assigned to JBOD I believe. I'm not too familiar with JBOD, but I think the setup process is similar to RAID. 

 

Prettyy much the only way is to move the data to somewhere other than the drives you want in the array.