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Frontview formats a FOUR tb external drive as a TWO tb ext3!
So I thought I'd found a reasonably priced high-capacity external hard drive for backing up my ReadyNAS:
Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II - 4 TB (Mac-formatted out of the box)
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=621
Having read on the forums that Readynas doesn't talk to HFS USB drives, and that FAT32 supports maximum 2TB partitions, I used Frontview to format it to ext3 (Wikipedia implies 4TB ext3 partitions are OK).
Here's what FrontView gave me after successful reformat to ext3: Volumes/USB Shares:
1 WD My Book [Partition 1] 1671 GB 1671 GB EXT3 480
I was hoping this was some Frontview issue, but alas - I got the error message trying to back up 2.7TB of data saying backup interrupted because the destination drive is full.
When I later connected the drive to My Mac, the disk's contents was unreadable as expected, but the Disk Utility lists the drive as having 3.6TB capacity, and the WD RAID Manager software now still shows it's in RAID0 with 3 726 GB capacity (this is AFTER ext3 formatting) ), so I am pretty sure it comes in 4TB RAID0 mode from the factory and not in the 2TB mirror mode.
The $500 question is - does the ext3 filesystem allow 4TB partitions? If yes, does ReadyNAS's built-in disk format utility limit the size to 2TB? If yes, will it be fixed?
Correction: it's the $250 question - I can stil use 2TB out of four :)
Thanks.
Here's my SETUP SUMMARY
* READYNAS PRO Pioneer Edition 5 x 1.5TB Seagate Barracudas running RAIDiator 4.2.5
+ Fast USB writes enabed
* MacOS 10.5.8
* Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II - 4 TB
+ connected to a USB port in the back
+ formatted to ext3 using Frontview, the main log saying "Successfully created EXT3 file system on the USB device. [USB_HDD_1]"
+ backed up to using Frontview backup tools, two shares totalling 2.7TB, one backed up fine, the other failed giving numerous error messages in the backup log in the following format:
"cp: cannot create regular file `/USB_HDD_1/DVD/Movies/*FILENAMES HERE*': Read-only file system"
"cp: cannot create directory `/USB_HDD_1/DVD/Movies/*FILENAMES HERE*': No such file or directory"
+ the main log says "Sat Aug 29 13:59:02 MSD 2009 Произошла ошибка копирования данных из источника ==> /USB_HDD_1/ из-за недостатка места на диске. [Задание 002]" - Russian for "backup error ... due to lack of space on the disk"
Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II - 4 TB (Mac-formatted out of the box)
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=621
Having read on the forums that Readynas doesn't talk to HFS USB drives, and that FAT32 supports maximum 2TB partitions, I used Frontview to format it to ext3 (Wikipedia implies 4TB ext3 partitions are OK).
Here's what FrontView gave me after successful reformat to ext3: Volumes/USB Shares:
1 WD My Book [Partition 1] 1671 GB 1671 GB EXT3 480
I was hoping this was some Frontview issue, but alas - I got the error message trying to back up 2.7TB of data saying backup interrupted because the destination drive is full.
When I later connected the drive to My Mac, the disk's contents was unreadable as expected, but the Disk Utility lists the drive as having 3.6TB capacity, and the WD RAID Manager software now still shows it's in RAID0 with 3 726 GB capacity (this is AFTER ext3 formatting) ), so I am pretty sure it comes in 4TB RAID0 mode from the factory and not in the 2TB mirror mode.
The $500 question is - does the ext3 filesystem allow 4TB partitions? If yes, does ReadyNAS's built-in disk format utility limit the size to 2TB? If yes, will it be fixed?
Correction: it's the $250 question - I can stil use 2TB out of four :)
Thanks.
Here's my SETUP SUMMARY
* READYNAS PRO Pioneer Edition 5 x 1.5TB Seagate Barracudas running RAIDiator 4.2.5
+ Fast USB writes enabed
* MacOS 10.5.8
* Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II - 4 TB
+ connected to a USB port in the back
+ formatted to ext3 using Frontview, the main log saying "Successfully created EXT3 file system on the USB device. [USB_HDD_1]"
+ backed up to using Frontview backup tools, two shares totalling 2.7TB, one backed up fine, the other failed giving numerous error messages in the backup log in the following format:
"cp: cannot create regular file `/USB_HDD_1/DVD/Movies/*FILENAMES HERE*': Read-only file system"
"cp: cannot create directory `/USB_HDD_1/DVD/Movies/*FILENAMES HERE*': No such file or directory"
+ the main log says "Sat Aug 29 13:59:02 MSD 2009 Произошла ошибка копирования данных из источника ==> /USB_HDD_1/ из-за недостатка места на диске. [Задание 002]" - Russian for "backup error ... due to lack of space on the disk"
26 Replies
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- I'm not familiar with this particular drive, so I can't say much without looking at the ReadyNAS logs. Can you plug in the WD, then use the info in my sig to send them to me?
- Will send logs soon.
However, I started all over just to confirm my 4TB drive wasn't plugged into the NAS as a 2TB RAID1 mirror:
Reconfigured the drive explicitly as RAID0 HFS+ 4TB using Western Digital Drive Manager utility
Formatted it on my MAC using Disk Utility as a 4TB drive
Just in case, Get Info confirmed the drive as 4TB partition
Connected it to ReadyNAS and it RECOGNIZED it as a 4TB USB drive in the USB Volumes/USB Storage
Formatted it as ext3.
Got 2TB ext3 drive.
Went back to my Mac and reformatted it as 4TB.
I am 100% sure it was 4TB capacity because in the end I used a 3rd-party backup utility [Data Backup - worked just fine] to backup all of my 2.7TB shares from ReadyNAS to it, while it was connected to MacBookPro.
So my theory is that since ReadyNAS uses ext3 as internal format for its disks and you explicitly state it doesn't support disks beyond 1.5TB it just balked at a 4TB "THING" connected to it, and formatted it to the best of its "knowledge" of reality - 2TB :)
BTW, ewok, you know how they make you input scrambled-looking letters when signing up for online service to make sure you're human and not a bot? Well, if you decide to continue to amaze us mortals with ultrafast response times, pls enter the following in your response: "jEdi5 aRe HumAn aNd not R0b()ts" :)
Seriously, Netgear has amazing online support quality and response time. A bothersome noob like myself knows what he's talking about... So thank you very much indeed. Spasibo! Slavsta wrote:
So my theory is that since ReadyNAS uses ext3 as internal format for its disks and you explicitly state it doesn't support disks beyond 1.5TB it just balked at a 4TB "THING" connected to it, and formatted it to the best of its "knowledge" of reality - 2TB :)
The ReadyNAS can handle a disk larger than 1.5TB, it's just a problem when you string a few of them together and make a RAID array larger than it can handle. 4TB shouldn't be a problem though. Go ahead and connect it to the NAS and format it so it shows 2TB and send me the logs when you get the chance.Slavsta wrote:
BTW, ewok, you know how they make you input scrambled-looking letters when signing up for online service to make sure you're human and not a bot? Well, if you decide to continue to amaze us mortals with ultrafast response times, pls enter the following in your response: "jEdi5 aRe HumAn aNd not R0b()ts" :)
jEdi5 aRe HumAn aNd not R0b()ts... though I may just be a really good captcha-breaking robot. :wink:- Hey ewok,
Can I send you my logs as well? I am having a similar problem.
I am using a 6TB 3200 and have connected 2 x 6GB external USB drives to it for backup purposes. Frontview reports the raw size of the devices as just 5.8TB, but when formatted as EXT3 creates a partition of 1.4TB, leaving the rest of the drive unusable.
I have connected both of the drives to a Linux machine and formatted the disks using GParted as GPT disks with a single partition using all of the available disk space. When connecting them to the 3200 again Frontview reports them as raw disks of 5.8TB again, and will only partition and format to 1.4TB potnoodle23 wrote:
Can I send you my logs as well? I am having a similar problem.
Sure, just follow the instructions in my sig for sending logs and I'll be happy to take a look.- Thanks for the logs. The ReadyNAS uses an older partitioner that can't handle partitions larger than 2 TB. I'd suggest partitioning and formatting the disk on a PC before using it with the NAS.
- Hi ewok,
I've used gparted on Linux to partition as a 6tb gpt partition formatted as ext3. It shows up as an unrecognized 5.8tb disk in frontview. I've have partitioned as a 6tb gpt partition on a vista pc, formatted as ntfs with the same results. Is it worth partitioning on a pc again and not formatting, or will frontview only format after wiping and repartitioning? - Frontview won't be able to partition and format a drive that big. Can you partition and format the drive to full capacity on your Linux or Windows box, then attach the drive to the NAS and resend the logs? I want to see what the NAS is seeing.
- Thanks ewok,
I have resent the logs as requested. I have partitioned both external disks as 5.8TB GPT partitions, left one RAW and formatted the other as NTFS. - It looks like GPT partition support may have been inadvertently left out of the last firmware. I'll have one of our engineers check and re-enable it for the next firmware release (due in the next few weeks).
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