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Forum Discussion
Esata and USB ports setup
What are the setting for the Esata and usb connections for a Rn516? There are three Esata ports (two on top above the ethernet ports and one near the bottom) and three usb ports (One in the Front...
I'm not sure what you mean for "settings". They are standard ports and drives can be mounted to each and recognized as a separate volume. The drives can be formatted as NTFS or EXT4 by the NAS or an external device. For most uses, NTFS is a better choice since it can be read by Windows and Mac computers in the event the NAS dies. Both can be used for a removable backup drive, but USB is better suited for that. (IMHO, USB is the better choice all the time.)
The USB is configured like one on a computer -- it's for drives and such, you cannot communicate with the NAS using it. It is best to use a powered USB device for anything bigger than a 2.5" drive.
The eSATA is SATA2 and is just eSATA, not powered eSATAp. It is port multiplier capable, but I don't recommend using that capability for a RAID volume, even though the NAS will do so (the 5-bay EDA500 expansion used it that way). Neither can be used to expand the internal volume (which would be a really bad idea if it did.
The drives can be formatted as NTFS or EXT4 by the NAS
BTRFS and FAT32 also work:
But FAT32 is a bad idea, due to the file size limit.
NTFS is a better choice
Agreed.
IMHO, USB is the better choice all the time.
My opinion also. I tried eSATA for a while years ago, but the drives I tried kept disconnecting. Their USB port worked much more reliably. eSATA external drives never went mainstream, and I haven't seen a new eSATA drive model for years. USB 3.x is much better option.
Given the size of current disks, I don't see any reason to connect external drives to the NAS for primary storage. It's better to just expand the data volume. Of course it still makes sense to use external drives in your backup plan, though I prefer network backup myself.
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