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USB HDD used as destination for Backup of 314 / use old NAS instead?
I purchased a Seagate Expansion 3TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STBV3000100) few years back to serve as my destination to backup my RN314. I plugged it into the front port of my NAS and whi...
I am thinking you formatted the USB drive on the NAS, likely using the EXT format that Mac and Windows doesn't recognize. I think there was a bug a while back that would account for the loss of space.
I don't see much point in using a drive format that you can only read on the NAS. Generally I think NTFS is the best option, so I'd reformat it on the PC. Then you'd be able to read/write to the drive from windows, and read from it on a Mac. You might need to delete the partitions ("volumes") using Windows Disk Manager first, and then create a new partition that fills the whole disk.
As far as the max size goes, a lot of the very large USB drives (5TB and up) use SMR technology. These might cause some issues with the NAS. There's no easy way to tell if a large USB drive uses SMR or not - the specs generally don't say. One approach is to get a powered USB enclosure + an internal drive - then you will know the drive specs.
Thanks stephen for the quick response.
When I look at the drive through the NAS interface, it shows a max of 2TB (SMB protocal). I use to be able to connect directly to my Mac and see the files or use a Virtual Machince PC see it, but when I connected it just now, my Mac responded that it was in an unreadable format, and offered to Eject, Ignore, or format.
I plugged it into my wife's work PC and it offered it format it right away.
I believe my course of action is to purchase a new drive, make a full new back up to it, then reformat the old drive, and begin alternating between them.
So i guess back to my first question, what the the largest USB HDD size that my NAS can recognize and use a s destination for backups?
I am thinking you formatted the USB drive on the NAS, likely using the EXT format that Mac and Windows doesn't recognize. I think there was a bug a while back that would account for the loss of space.
I don't see much point in using a drive format that you can only read on the NAS. Generally I think NTFS is the best option, so I'd reformat it on the PC. Then you'd be able to read/write to the drive from windows, and read from it on a Mac. You might need to delete the partitions ("volumes") using Windows Disk Manager first, and then create a new partition that fills the whole disk.
As far as the max size goes, a lot of the very large USB drives (5TB and up) use SMR technology. These might cause some issues with the NAS. There's no easy way to tell if a large USB drive uses SMR or not - the specs generally don't say. One approach is to get a powered USB enclosure + an internal drive - then you will know the drive specs.
Thanks again Stephen, great information and suggestions. Here is what I am looking at:
Enclosure:
https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-enclosure-Aluminum-Support-HDL-SU3/dp/B00M94AGRM
Hard Disk:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LOOJBQY
I did not see SMR listed in the stats on the sale page, and to be sure, I downloaded the manual and searched it for SMR and did not find it there.
The Ironwolf (and WDC Red drives) are all PMR, so they are good choices.
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