Please help with adding disks that already have data on them

TrueNAS General
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Hi all - hope you are doing well.

I’ve just created a brand new TrueNAS Scale build, and be gentle on me as this is my first foray into the world outside of Windows for home media server purposes.

I’m looking to simply migrate my use case away from Win11 to TrueNAS for the sole purpose of hosting a Plex server with my movies/shows.

I was trying to figure out how to mount/add in my existing HDDs (only two of them) which contain the existing data - I’m getting stuck as I don’t see any “Import Disk” option anywhere. I haven’t gotten too far, as I don’t want to risk erasing any data by creating a new pool, although it seems to be the only option available - is this correct?

I know that the build, in the very least, can recognize the disks are present by going to Storage → Disks → and confirming the list of drives. Does this mean that I’m good to go and just need to add Plex as an app/container from here? How can I verify that the data is readable still on the Scale build?

Again, main priority is that I don’t want anything erased off the disks - Is this possible?

Thanks!

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You wouldn’t physically add the disks to TrueNAS. You would attach them to a Windows machine and copy the data over a network using SMB Sharing.

Describe in detail your TrueNAS server and what you have set up. Do you have a Child dataset and that set up for SMB sharing? Can you access that share from Windows and read/write files?

Be descriptive so we can figure out what hardware you have, where you are on the setup and where you can connect the drives. I would power down TrueNAS and remove the Windows disks you are trying to get data off. We don’t want them accidentally added to a pool and erased.

My Details expands in my signature to get you and idea of describing your TrueNAS system.

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You are correct that creating a new pool is the only option & that doing so would result in data loss.

HARD STOP. Remove disks with data, create a pool using anything else other than those disks, copy data over to new pool, profit.

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  • you need 2 additional HDDs for your Truenas to form a Pool with a mirror pair.
  • having just one HDD in your Truenas makes IMO little sense, since then you are not better off than now.
  • these HDDs have to be CMR (not SMR)
  • additionally you probably want 1 or 2 SSDs for the apps (plex,…,) to reside on. Apps need a pool other than the boot device. You cannot install apps on the boot device.
  • installing apps on the HDD pool is possible but performance will be poor