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I have three identical disks in a Windows 8 storage pool. I'd like to move to Linux, but I'm using about 3/4 of the space across all three drives in the pool - how would you recommend I get Linux going while keeping the data from all three drives?

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Linux is obviously not going to support mounting a Windows 8 storage pool (at time of writing), and even if it did, it is very unlikely that any live-migration could be performed from an NTFS-formatted Win8 storage pool to a Linux-readable array.

The safest (and only?) option is either purchase enough new drives or find enough spare drives to house all of the data while you get Linux installed and an array configured (hardware RAID, software RAID, or ZFS). Then, move all of the data onto the new array.

Something to keep in mind though: If you spread all of the data across as few new and/or spare drives as possible, you have a single point of failure. If any drive dies before you copy the data back off of it into your array, you lose whatever data you had on that drive. Optimally, to ensure the most data security throughout the transition, important data should reside on at least two drives while the migration is being performed.

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  • I figured as much, good advice here too.
    – JP.
    May 29, 2013 at 10:41

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