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Forum Discussion
Slavsta
Aug 29, 2009Aspirant
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
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
- Glad to have noticed this thread and info because I had planned to do exactly the same thing (utilize western digital 4tb usb drive as backup) in the future.
@ ewok, please help make sure that this support is included in the future NV+/sparc updates as well. - shawn174AspirantAny timing on when GPT will be supported? My ReadyNAS Pro seems sick, and I'd like to get the data off to a 4TB USB drive. I'd like to reset it to factory, so I need to get the data backed up. I guess I'll hook my backup drive to my Linux box for the time being..... :(
- ewokNETGEAR ExpertIt will most likely appear in 4.2.10, but I don't have an ETA.
- jrxAspirant
ewok wrote: 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).
Hi,
I have just purchased a ReadyNas3200 and need support for USB drives greater than 2TB What are my options?
It is currently loaded with RAIDiator 4.2.9. Would it be safe to go back to a version that supports GPT? If so which one and where do i get it?
Please help!
Thanks - jrxAspirant
ewok wrote: It will most likely appear in 4.2.10, but I don't have an ETA.
Hi ewok,
Do you have an update on release 4.2.10?
We are waiting *very* patiently for GPT support & the "permissions" problem to be fixed...
Thanks - captain1AspirantOk, so I think I've figured out how to format my USB drive to contain a big enough ext3 volume to hold my ReadyNAS NV+ data so I can Nuke the ReadyNAS with factory settings and the new firmware which is supposed to allow me to use all the pretty new 2TB drives.
I put the TitanicUSB drive on a Linux box and did this (as root of course):
(replace /dev/sdx with /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc or whichever USB drive you want to partition). Obviously, be sure you pick the CORRECT USB drive, or you'll wipe out that other one you forgot was plugged in. ;-)
# parted /dev/sdx
GNU Parted 1.8.8
Using /dev/sdx
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) mklabel gpt
(parted) print
Model: External RAID (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 6001GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
(parted) mkpart primary 0 6001G
(parted) quit
Use mkfs to format file system (again, replacing /dev/sdx1 with your USB drive designator and partition number):
# mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdx1 - potnoodle23AspirantHi ewok,
My 4200 has just emailed me to say that the following update is now available:-
Name: RAIDiator-x86
Version: 4.2.11
Date: Fri May 21 00:17:20 2010
Size: 56623104
I can't find it here on readynas.com or on the Netgear website to check on the release notes to see what has changed. Do you know if it will solve this problem with the large external drives for us all? - mdgm-ntgrNETGEAR Employee RetiredA global announcement on the forum links to the 4.2.11 Release Notes.
It doesn't look like a fix for your issue is in 4.2.11 from looking at the notes. Regardless I strongly recommend you update to 4.2.11. - potnoodle23AspirantThanks for the quick reply mdgm, I'll go and take a look now.
- captain1AspirantWhat's the status on this? I was directed over here but this thread seems to have died a few months ago with no solution since then.
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