I have 2 win 2003 servers that I want to convert to Linux except that both servers has multiple drives configured as dynamic disks.

server 1
200gb and 300gb drives are spanned to be seen as on drive
only got 150gb left open space
PIV Socket 478 1.8Ghz 1 GB ddr 400 Ram

server 2
120gb and a 120gb HD spanned as one drive
750gb SATA drive almost full
Socket 939 Athalon XP300 (I think) 1 GB of ddr 400 Ram
I have be using win 2003 server on both but I am getting tired of having to reload windows ever time a software glitch jumps the system, so I want to go back to Linux as a server althought I have not decided on weather to use SAMBA or use NFS (I think.) as a means b which I want to access the files I use on the server.

I have nothing to back any of the data too and I don't want to have to use DVD disks as it could get to be a very large backup.


Any Ideas out there greatfully accepted and Thanks


RObert

Linux can read some of these dynamic disks using LDM; but I'm not sure about the spanned versions. Unless you're using a pretty old distro, your kernel probably has the LDM patch enabled. It doesn't mean fdisk will read the things properly, but you should be able to mount them with ntfs-3g, possibly after assembling the spanned section. I know you can use mdadm to assemble dynamic raid disks, perhaps you can use LVM to assemble the spanned disks.

If not, well, HDDs are relatively cheap, I'd get an external TB drive and backup to that (you need a backup anyway), then reformat the system. Cheaper than your time and data.

On the other question, I'd recommend samba.

Thanks I showed my wife the answer you gave me and she let me order a 1tb HD as long as it was low priced so I found one for $106.00 including shipping. It was a good answer to help me convince her to let me get it.
I will be copying all the Dynamic HDs to it while it is installed in the external cas and I will split it out from there. Once again Thanks for the helpm it may not have been too techie but it worked none the less

Robert