Unable to mount/format USB Drive

I know that this thread is 3 years old, but here in 2009 I've got a ReadyNas NV that has the latest Radiator installed and I am having the same problem. I didn't find an answer upon reading through the thread, so I figured I'd ask about this in case the fix is known by now.

The background is that I was trying to back up my whole NAS to a USB drive (new drive + enclosure, works fine with my mac and PC), but it kept failing because I was backing up to a FAT32 partition on the USB drive and some of the filenames on my NAS are not OK on FAT32.

So I went to Volumes -> USB Storage, clicked on the "Options" dropdown -> Format EXT3, then clicked "go"

Nothing happened, except the dropdown menu and the "go" button became grayed-out. The "apply" button down the page was grayed out still, so it didn't seem like there was any way to kick the format into gear. Even after I left it that way all night, there was no change.

Like an earlier person who posted to this thread, I hooked the USB drive up to my Linux PC and used mkfs.ext3 to format that partition. That went fine, and on my linux PC the drive is now ext3-formatted.

However, when I plug it back into my NAS, it now shows up formatted as "FAT' in Volumes -> USB Storage.

Is there a fix for this? It seems like the NAS won't format it to EXT3 itself, and it won't recognize it as EXT3-formatted when I do it elsewhere. Not sure what else to try..

Thanks,
-David Merrill

Same here as last post! External RAID5 enclosure formatted on Linux box to 6TB ext3 volume.
Won't automount on ReadyNAS NV+. I have no idea what /dev/* entry corresponds to front USB port to even attempt a manual mount. Anyone?

What does "usbtree" say about your storage box? (Since you talk about manually mounting the thing I guess you've got SSH access to your ReadyNAS ...)

-Stefan

# usbtree
/: Bus 03.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M
/: Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M
|__ Port 2: Dev 2, If 0, Class=HID, Driver=usbhid, 1.5M
/: Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci_hcd/4p, 480M
|__ Port 3: Dev 4, If 0, Class=stor., Driver=usb-storage, 480M

# mount
/dev/hdc1 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
tmpfs on /ramfs type ramfs (rw)
tmpfs on /USB type tmpfs (rw,size=16k)
/dev/c/c on /c type ext3 (rw,noatime,acl,user_xattr,usrquota,grpquota)
/c/backup on /home/ftp/backup type bind (rw,bind)
nfsd on /proc/fs/nfsd type nfsd (rw)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)

I just wanted to let everyone know that I had the same problems with using my Maxtor OneTouch III 750 GB (formatted with OSX Extended) as a backup drive with my NV+, i.e. can't format the drive, the "Go" button does nothing, etc.

I hooked my drive into my iMac and changed the drive name to all caps without any blanks. Previously, I had named the drive "ReadyNAS Backup". I renamed it "READYNAS_BACKUP" (without quotes) and then reattached the drive to my NV+. The drive began functioning normally, and I was able to format it as EXT3 and run a backup.

So the space in the drive name (and maybe the caps too) caused Frontview problems in processing the format and backup request. Also, it's nice that the backup log is now being displayed; I can at least see the (slow) progress of my 500 GB backup.

ScuseMe wrote:

I hooked my drive into my iMac and changed the drive name to all caps without any blanks. Previously, I had named the drive "ReadyNAS Backup". I renamed it "READYNAS_BACKUP" (without quotes) and then reattached the drive to my NV+. The drive began functioning normally, and I was able to format it as EXT3 and run a backup. So the space in the drive name (and maybe the caps too) caused Frontview problems in processing the format and backup request. Also, it's nice that the backup log is now being displayed; I can at least see the (slow) progress of my 500 GB backup.

I was going nuts trying to figure out why the drive in my HDD docking station couldn't be mounted or formatted on my NV+ as well. FrontView defaulted the name to USB_HDD_5, which I *think* was used with another drive. After reading your post, I renamed it to USBHDD and it was able to be mounted and formatted without issue.

I suspect that that FrontView remembers all mounted hard drives and doesn't like names to be reused.

Regards,
Ira

...he disappeared.

ScuseMe wrote:
I So the space in the drive name (and maybe the caps too) caused Frontview problems in processing the format and backup request. Also, it's nice that the backup log is now being displayed; I can at least see the (slow) progress of my 500 GB backup.

What do you mean the backup log is being displayed? I am unable to display my backup log and having backup failures.

fixmacs - that is an old thread and maybe the reason that ScuseMe "disappeared" is that is post is almost two years old. I would suggest you start your own, describing your equipment and exactly what problems you are having. You are far more likely to get a response. Many people skip over the discussions that go on for pages and started years ago. They are not so relevant today as there have been several versions of Frontview released in the interim.