Sorry, newbie question but I can’t find the answer anywhere. I have disks with partitions/filesystems created in windows that have data on them. Can I add these disks to rockstor without losing the data? If so, how?
Hi Fredrik,
The short answer is no.
You would need to either a) set up the system with new disks and copy the data across from your existing ones or b) make a backup of the data, wipe the disks for use in Rockstor then copy the data over
The slightly longer answer is that pretty much all of Rockstor’s NAS functionality relies on an advanced filesystem called btrfs. Windows does not support this filesystem, so there is no interoperability between them. Rockstor needs control of your entire disk(s).
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That’s unfortunate. I have several 8tb disks filled that I have used in a windows machine, the software I used before don’t support windows 7 anymore and when I upgraded to windows 11 (or 10 also) the nic can’t be used. I thought this maybe was a solution for me.
I think you will find that any storage software not based on Windows will also not support using Windows based disks directly. The same will apply for Unraid, TrueNAS and OpenMediaVault.
You could use a barebones Linux and import the disks as is with the NTFS filesystem, but you won’t be able the take advantage of RAID and other advanced features without wiping the disks and using a native Linux filesystem. Not a recommended option without plenty of existing Linux experience anyway.
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Okay, I’ll think this through again and see what solution is best for me. Thanks alot for quick and superb support! =)
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