Can you use pre-formatted drives containing data without loosing said data with this unit?
1407694
To add to that answer, yes, which is how I set mine up. I have 4 3TB Drives from an older MacPro and just popped them in and was good to go!
1923240
Shouldn't auto format but would most likely give you the option to format/wipe both drives as WHS partitions are not supported.
2278328
You sure can. I formatted the drive to use it as a Linux installation disk.
527108
ABSOLUTELY. I have been using a pair of 3TB, a pair of 4T and a pair of 1 TB seagates for some time with no problems. I do not use any of their special back-up software. (KIK, Ph.D.)
936427
No you don't need to format them. At least I didn't and it reads them just like any other portable hard drive. I'm not sure how to set it up if you are planning to have a seperate operating system on them. But just for storage use, its basic plug n play.
218585
yes absolutely. my advice is to just ignore all the seagate info on the drive. I basically just put it all in a folder that says "seagate sys info" and never disturb it. If you let it set stuff up, then you could become a slave to its rules. Basically just treat it as a big fat flash drive. Copy all, and it will only update the new stuff. It is incredibly reliable and fast
293116
If your using it as a secondary drive Windows will reformat it for you. I reformatted mine several times.
2010995
I'm pretty sure it has to format them. When you put a drive in it will look at it and say that to use it it will need to format it and ask if you want to do that. But I'm not 100% sure. Drobo.com has a pretty good support section where I bet you can find the answer.
1179299
yes, you can't format it to FAT32 it must be formatted to NTFS - there is a dropdown menu and that option is there when you format the drive.
1211444
No, use your manufacture drive tool , third party software or simply reformat existing drive
1728918
When you reformat a drive all of the data will be wiped out. Always make it a practice to backup your data because sooner or later a drive could go bad.
1812123
No but you can boot from a standalone CD program and make a copy of a drive that has been freshly formatted.
312569
I don't know. My problem with the drive was the format function would fail to ever complete.
62529
No, this unit is brand new so they don't have any file system on them. If your putting this in a Windows computer it will prompt you to format the drive to be able to use it. Thanks!
135684
Yes--but you will need to use Disk Utility to reformat it. Takes just a couple of minutes.
240457
I am really sure but, you would probably lose 3-4 GB of data because of manufacture formatting, I would suggest go with 2TB.
1562357
Are you talking about cloning the contents of this drive to your computer? If so, yes. It is indeed possible, manually or with the help of freeware. I recommend the latter though. I did the opposite though as I have a 3TB drive. Good luck.