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I have a 5 year old RND314 thajt works well and I have just bought a new WD My Book 8 TD external disk for backkup. Previousl I have WD 4 TB. The new externa disk I have tested with my Mac and works. Connected to the NAS it does not communicate. Tried both the front USB 2.0 and the rear USB 3.0 jackets. Also tried reformat the new USB disk on the Mac to ExFAT but did not help. Any idea?
When the external USB disk is connected it actually blocks the start-up. Never comes "booting" in the small window of the NAS. What can be wrong? This USB disk not compatible or what?
NTFS is the best option if you use a PC. Though I think with a Mac, you'd either need access to a Windows system, or get a third-party package that will let you do the formatting on a Mac.
NTFS is the best option if you use a PC. Though I think with a Mac, you'd either need access to a Windows system, or get a third-party package that will let you do the formatting on a Mac.
When the external USB disk is connected it actually blocks the start-up. Never comes "booting" in the small window of the NAS. What can be wrong?
These disks comes with various additional software on a dedicated bootable partition - which is bootable on industry standard x86 based systems what the RN are under the hood. To my knowledge, the ReadyNAS should boot from the external USB only using a defined process for recovery - and even a non-recognized file system should not cause this. @StephenB any insight on this?
Re: New USB external disk WD 8 TB does not connect
Just formatting the obvious "big" storage partition alone might not help. This would require removing any partitions most likley hidden, then add one single partition and format again. The Windows 10 disk/partition manager does allow this.
When the external USB disk is connected it actually blocks the start-up. Never comes "booting" in the small window of the NAS. What can be wrong?
These disks comes with various additional software on a dedicated bootable partition - which is bootable on industry standard x86 based systems what the RN are under the hood. To my knowledge, the ReadyNAS should boot from the external USB only using a defined process for recovery - and even a non-recognized file system should not cause this. @StephenB any insight on this?
I haven't played much with USB drives connected to my ReadyNAS - so I am not sure on this.
Re: New USB external disk WD 8 TB does not connect
I know that the latest BIOS for the RN516 allows it to boot from USB (including NAS USB recovery) without the need to go through the normal USB recovery process. It wasn't true on the early models, but I don't know if there were intermediate ones that act the same. The same isn't true for all ReadyNAS but may be on the 314. I have no idea if Netgear asked for that change, or if came without them knowing (since they don't make the motherboard BIOS themselves).
Re: New USB external disk WD 8 TB does not connect
The change was made on newer RN300 series devices as well, however it should only try to boot automatically off a NTGR USB Service Key, not just any USB drive.
There was an updated USB3 F/W in a BIOS update as well, however if you are having problems using a drive with a USB2 port, the USB3 F/W isn’t the problem.
I do know that having internal disks formatted to boot Windows can mess with trying to boot into ReadyNAS OS.
If you check the date in bios_ver.log it can easily be confirmed whether you have a BIOS that automatically boots off NTGR USB Service keys or not.
Re: New USB external disk WD 8 TB does not connect
That date indicates you have the latest BIOS, so you have both the USB3 F/W upgrade and if a NTGR USB Service Key is connected the NAS should automatically boot off it on power on.
Re: New USB external disk WD 8 TB does not connect
Does this explain that my NAS314 when connected to the new external NAS (formattaded as EXFAT) do not boot? Your idea is that it looks for a key for booting on the external disk that is not there, and that is why it does not go forward?
Re: New USB external disk WD 8 TB does not connect
If it doesn't find a service key, then it shouldn't try to boot off the drive.
Since you are using exfat is that the NAS can't mount the USB drive. Since we know that's a problem, I'd try fixing that first and see if the boot problem remains.
Are you using one of the USB 3 ports on the rear of the NAS, or the USB 2 port on the front? Also, is the USB drive using mains power, or are you drawing power from the USB port?
Then back at my home-office I reformatted to BTRFS
Can you access the BTRFS file system on your PCs? If not, then I suggest going back to NTFS. Having backups you can't read on your other devices isn't a good backup strategy.
I was surprised that the NAS also can write to NTFS - I have missed that.
No special draw-backs?
I think the key point is that you need to be able to read your backup on at least one other machine. If you can read ext or btrfs, then it's fine to use those formats.
As far as file attributes and permissions go - I'd start with the question of what attributes matter to you. Then do a test backup or two, and see if those are preserved [or not]. Probably worth checking no matter what file system you pick.
Personally I back up to other ReadyNAS using rsync - which will preserve the file attributes. I don't have recent experience with backing up to USB disks.
