Merge all HDD data to a single HDD

[MrCheeto]

I have a Mac Pro that has all 4 bays full. Two 500gb drives, a 1tb drive, and a 1.5tb drive.

They're all full up! Yup!

I need a way to put as much of the data from all of the drives onto as few drivs as possible. I calculate 3.5tb, so two 2tb drives would do for now and I can expand to four 2tb drives or larger drives in the future.

So how do I go about simply automatically merging the data from multiple drives to one?

 

[ActionableMango]

So how do I go about simply automatically merging the data from multiple drives to one?

Automatic... hahahahaha!

It's hard to say without knowing what's on them. But assuming one drive is the boot drive and home folder, and all the other drives are data, it won't be too hard.

Use Carbon Copy Cloner, Clonezilla, or some other similar tool to copy your boot/home drive to a new 2TB drive. Replace the old boot drive with the new and test.

Once that works, simply file copy drive 2 to the new boot drive.

Pull drive 2 and insert second 2TB drive. File copy remaining drives 3 and 4 to the boot drive or second 2TB drive as needed.

If you have all sorts of crap going on like partitions and boot camp and linux and Lion developer previews and whatever, you need to be very specific about what you have.

 

[MrCheeto]

The thing is, though, that all of this data is used by Final Cut.

I've known professional software to be very very picky about where files are located and relocating them can freak it the **** out.

Currently, I'm not using any RAID solution. So Final Cut recognizes that all these bajillion million files are spread across four drives.

How would I ensure that Final Cut doesn't spaz out and have an anxiety attack over "missing" files?

 

[philipma1957]

you would keep the original set up intact. use 2 3tb drives like this


http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Western-Dig...ltDomain_0&hash=item41588aaa7c#ht_1558wt_1055

put this in the mac pro and partition it into 3 1 tb sections then clone the 3 hdds one at a time to it.

then put in the second 3tb hdd with 2 partitions and clone the big 1.5tb to it. so now the pair of 3tb drives have all your info and are read as 5 drives 4 clones and a spare. then pull all the original drives just use the pair of 3tb drives. do not erase any of the oem four drives . leave them in a box for a week and see if you pair of 3tb drives are good. if not you still have all the original drives.

come back to us and ask what to do. if you do this I am 90 percent sure it will work.

 

[ActionableMango]

The thing is, though, that all of this data is used by Final Cut.

That was critical information.

Use Media Manager to copy the projects.

Definitely keep the old drives for a while.