I am about to order one of those 24 bay server cases and put my existing media server in it. Since I'll need an hba card, I have a question. If you connect a drive with data already on it to an hba card, do you loose the data? Assuming the answer is no, (fingers crossed) will it have the same drive letter?
Adding a HBA card without using data.
- Thread starter rdsii64
- Start date
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under windows you will not loose your data if you keep the same setup as original setup.
if your original setup is hardware RAID, of course you will loose your data when you go to hba-mode.
and the same drive letters you can set manualy under windows -->> disk manager
if your original setup is hardware RAID, of course you will loose your data when you go to hba-mode.
and the same drive letters you can set manualy under windows -->> disk manager
Assuming your existing drives are attached to an onboard SATA controller with no (software) RAID of any kind, as long as the new HBA is flashed to IT mode/firmware, you should be able to connect your drives, and they will "just" show up.
The same drive letters may not be preserved, but you can reset them, as ari2asem said above.
The same drive letters may not be preserved, but you can reset them, as ari2asem said above.
I'm running windows 10 LTSC, I'm not running any kind of storage specific software, I'm going to move my current emby server into a 24 bay chassis because I'm going to run out of drive bays. I use the backblaze free unlimited service for backup so no raid ,network shares, or "mounted volumes" allowed. Just a big box with 25 drive letters.
Thank you. It looks like I will be fine then. If I understand this correctly, (chime in if I'm wrong) an HBA card in the correct mode (IT mode) is basically just a SATA controller in a PCIE slot. I can put my mechanical drives on it and leave my SSD boot drive on the motherboard. Windows should take from there. I'll make sure I have a local backup before I try this.
yes, because as i understand, you dont have yet any data on your hdd's. am i correct ?
your data are in cloud (backblaze). correct ??
if 2 times YES, then you can use any hba in IT-mode.
about software, i can recommend snapraid. (snapraid.it)
big advantage of snapraid: you can use any hdd, with or without data on it, any size (100gb, 18tb). even if you decide to switch to another storage solution, your data are still on hdd.
big disadvantage of snapraid: you have manualy sync and scrub your array. there are some helper-scripts to automate these taks.
just read snapraid.it
good luck
just to be sure, make a backup of your 12tb....then add hba and proceed
When you add HBA card and more HDD need reset to NAS/WinSer raid 0 / 1 /5 mode disk, so the disk format will need to change. You will lose all data when you do add HDD to Raid mode operation.
If no Raid operation , through mode also suggest backup the disk content before try it.
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An HBA card does not work in RAID mode. A card that works in RAID mode is called a RAID card, not an HBA card.
What HBA card is for throught more HDD port to OS , Normal NAS or Win Files server will create soft RAID from it. See what kind application you want to go with.
In OP's case it's like moving an HDD from one SATA port to another SATA port. It's totally irrelevant to whatever soft RAID is being used. Unless you recommend backup the content before moving between SATA ports, which makes no sense.