Turn existing drive into NAS with RAID?

[Norcross]

I currently have a 300 gb IDE drive in my home server that houses all my music. I'd like to set up a small NAS with a secondary drive using RAID as a backup, since (a) I want to stream the music throughout the house, and (b) I don't want to rebuild that library in the event of drive failure.

Can I get a second drive and set up a small NAS configuration with RAID, incorporating the current music drive as-is?

 

[scotty]

Sort of.

Since you're setting up RAID 1 (mirroring), it will depend on the RAID controller and whether it will support making an array out of an existing drive and keeping the data intact. Many/most consumer level RAID cards and onboard RAID controllers wont do this. I haven't worked with many of nvidia and intel's newer onboard RAID solutions which have all sorts of fancy software based options, so maybe on a newer board this might be possible. Someone else might be able to shed better light here.

Nothing stopping you from backing up your data, making the array from scratch, and putting the data back on though. I don't think there's a way to do it while keeping the data intact. All depends on the RAID controller and what it will let you do.

 

[Norcross]

Thanks for the follow-up. I may just set up a new NAS using RAID all together, then move the files over after the fact. SATA would probably be better, anyway.