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Forum Discussion
Access to Netgear Readynas Ultra RNDU4000 withOS6
Hello together, I am using a Readynas Ultra 4 with two disks. I want to access the data on the disks. But as the machine has only USB2 and the network access is to slow as well, I am looking for a w...
Dear Stephen,
thank you so much for your help and answer. So what file system I should use to acces the disks via btrfs ? xraid, raid, jbod? after installing btrfs within ubuntu and connet the hdisks with an usb to sata connector, the hard disks should be seen as a normal disk? Like an usb stick?Or is there more knowledge necessary?
I am using a dell laptop with an actual ubuntu LTS.
klausla wrote:
But as the machine has only USB2 and the network access is to slow as well, I am looking for a way to access the hard disks directly via SATA.
Getting back to this. Network access with your ultra should be over 70 MB/s for large files, and it is the best way to access your files. Of course, getting good speeds is much easier over wired ethernet - if you are using wifi, then the best approach is to switch to ethernet when you are doing a lot of file access.
Direct access to the disks is useful if something has gone wrong. But it's not something you should be doing routinely. One factor is that you can damage the SATA connectors on the disks if you remove/reinsert them too often.
Also, you always need to power down before you remove disks for this purpose (and power up after the disks have been reinserted). Plus you should be careful to preserve the slot order.
klausla wrote:
Dear Stephen,
thank you so much for your help and answer. So what file system I should use to acces the disks via btrfs ? xraid, raid, jbod?
You'll need to install both mdadm and btrfs.
The file system is btrfs. It is used with all RAID modes. Conceptually, RAID creates virtual disks from your physical storage, and the file system then uses those virtual disks. Those virtual disks are called RAID groups. With ReadyNAS, the raid groups (virtual disks) are mdxxx devices. They start from md127, and go downwards from there (md126, ...). There are also two other other RAID groups - md0 and md1. md0 is the OS partition (the NAS boots from it). md1 is used for swap. Neither contain your data.
What RAID modes are you using now? (XRAID or something else)?
If you have one volume, then the normal way to mount it in linux (as read-only) is to enter
# btrfs device scan # btrfs fi show # mount -o ro /dev/md127 /data
If you want to mount it read/write, then you'd leave out the -o ro
If you have multiple volumes, then you need to sort out the correct device to mount for each (md127). That might take a bit of trial and error if some of the volumes were vertically expanded (and have multiple RAID groups). But the btrfs fi show command should help.
klausla wrote:
I am using a dell laptop with an actual ubuntu LTS.
Note you will need to connect all the disks.
Dear Stephan,
thank you for your reply. I already found this operations for BTRFS "somewhere" and tried it. It was not working properly. But I used it with the "o" (means read only) so it was not readable and I was not able to put some files on the hard disks.
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Surely I am very careful with the disks and the use of it in combination with the NAS.
But in a worst case.. there is only a low performance to get the data out of the NAS. USB2 and about 100mbit lan. Therefore I think it would be usefull to access directly.
Only worst case scenario. But this has already happened. so I would like to be prepared next time.
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As I have started again from scrap (return to default) I have any options of hard disk usage. Flexraid, Xraid, jbod.
But I want to have direct access to the hard disks. So which one of the Raid or JBOD or anything would you recommend to get access direct to the hard disks?
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What would be useful. It would be usefull to get a driver for Windows in which we have direct access to this file system. Some companys seem to offer that? It would be great and very helpful to get something from netgear!?
There are beta versions of MDADM and BTRFS available for Windows. Just Google it. I've been meaning to give them a try with various ReadyNAS drive configurations, but the PC I was using for such things decided to die on me.
Note that these will only work with intact arrays, not ones with errors.
I doubt Netgear will ever develop a tool to assist in using the NAS in a way it was not intended. As has already been said, taking the drives in and out of a NAS is not how they are intended to be used nor a good plan for longevity of your equipment. If you need something faster than gigabit Ethernet, you simply bought the wrong device.
No it was not the wrong NAS. It is just aged.:smileyhappy:.... But it is well and robust made. And throwing sources just away is something I am not so fond of. So I am happy to get the OS6 on it and would like to use it.
And netgear has sold therefore other products to me.
klausla wrote:
USB2 and about 100mbit lan.
Gigabit LAN, not 100 mbit.
Though the Ultra-4 can't saturate gigabit ethernet. It can deliver about ~600 mbit transfer speeds for large files though. https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/31272-netgear-readynas-ultra-4-reviewed?showall=&start=2
You can test your own performance using NAStester. http://www.808.dk/?code-csharp-nas-performance
klausla wrote:
As I have started again from scrap (return to default) I have any options of hard disk usage. Flexraid, Xraid, jbod.
But I want to have direct access to the hard disks. So which one of the Raid or JBOD or anything would you recommend to get access direct to the hard disks?
Well. jbod is simplest, because you only need to connect one disk to the PC.
But you give up RAID redundancy and expansion if you use it.
For most users, XRAID is the best option.
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