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Okay, first question... I figure I'd better clear up this one before getting started

I've bought a couple of new disks for my upcoming FlexRAID box, and intend to re-use another couple of existing ones.

One of these is a fairly recent 2TB Samsung F4 (same as the new ones). It is currently inside my XP PC and almost full with media files that should really be on a NAS.

It would save me some trouble if I could just extract it from the PC and transfer it to the FlexRAID box as-is, with the new ones formatted in ext4.

I'm fairly sure Ubuntu will mount the NTFS volume without a problem, and FlexRAID seems to be able to "mix and match" too...

Is that right ? Or is there a compelling reason that I should transfer the contents to a new, Linux-formatted disk, then also convert it to ext4 ?

Thanks for any insight,
fp

Ubuntu can read it (may have to install a package).

If you plan to use this drive in your Ubuntu server it would be best if you mounted it as read only and transfer the files from the NTFS drive to a native Ubuntu file system formatted drive (ie: ext4). Problems can result from reading and writing to NTFS drive in linux and unix.

If you dont plan on using this drive in your server you could copy the contents of the drive to the Ubuntu system from the XP computer.

It is always best to use a native file system in any OS.

Well... I was afraid someone would say that :-)

But OK, for the sake of long-term stability, copying the contents to a new disk and reformatting is not a big price to pay...

Thanks for the advice !