A system and method for previewing a disk drive's disk data format (DDF) metadata before performing an “import” or “clear” method to make it available on a receiving system comprising a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) array. A preview method is implemented such that the DDF metadata of one or more disk drives comprising a foreign configuration can be examined prior to importing or clearing the disk. New objects are derived from existing virtual disk and physical disk array objects that have the same characteristics as existing object definitions. These new objects are aggregated to comprise a new foreign configuration object when foreign metadata is discovered on a drive by a receiving RAID controller.