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Forum Discussion
2100: 4TB and larger USB-Disks for Backup?
Hi! Is it possible to use 4TB and perhaps even larger USB HDDs for backing up a 2100v1 via the NAS-USB-Ports? Thanks in advance for your answers! :)
When I tried it, my 5 TB drive got formatted as about 300 GBs (without telling me)
Googling seems to show that supporting more than 2 TB isn't possible with fdisk (which my Netgear used),
but that one has to use GNU's "parted" (not on my Netgear).
I'm still investigating :(
Stan
Try formatting the disks on a PC
What firmware are you running on the ReadyNAS?
I'm on an 1100, OP was on a 2100.
I'm running RAIDiator 4.1.14 [1.00a147]
which I don't think knows about exFAT.
So, formatting on a PC won't work (unless I use third party software to enable ext3), because FAT32 limit is 2 TB or so :(
I do plan to format it on a Linux box, but haven't had a chance today.
thanks,
Stan
sieler wrote:
I'm on an 1100, OP was on a 2100.
I'm running RAIDiator 4.1.14 [1.00a147]
which I don't think knows about exFAT.
So, formatting on a PC won't work (unless I use third party software to enable ext3), because FAT32 limit is 2 TB or so :(
I do plan to format it on a Linux box, but haven't had a chance today.
thanks,
Stan
The 1100 (like all 4.1.x systems) is limited to 2 TB drives. The issue isn't related to ext3, exfat - it is more basic. 4.1.x systems can't handle GPT formatting, they only support MBR. And that is limited to 2 TB. There is no workaround.
The answer that worked for me was:
1. on a Linux system, I used fdisk to partition the 5 TB drive into one 2 TB partition, a second 2 TB partition, and a 1 TB partition
(I actually set the partition sizes to 2000 GB, not quite 2 TB)
2. on a Linux system, I used mkfs.ext3 to format each of the partitions.
(Given how we planned to use them, as destinations for backups, that was a mistake ... ext2 would be better, as the journaling
option isn't need in thise case and probably just slows down the backup a bit.)
3. I connected the drive to our Netgear ReadyNAS 1100.
The web interface (Frontview) only showed the first two partitions. (Also, "df" shows only two mounted drives.)
(I can see the third partition if I look at /dev/sda3, but ... I don't really care about it.)
4. I used Frontview to create a once-a-week backup to /USB//USB_HDD_3_1
(I felt I couldn't safely say "front USB port" because that was ambiguous ... what would the backup pick when it eventually ran?)
5. I clicked "go" (or "start"?) to start the backup manually.
6. About two days (and 910 GB) later, it finished!
(the one time I looked closely I saw it running at about 5 MByte/second.)
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