Accessing EXT3 external harddrive connected to the front USB of the ReadyNASRNDP6310 from Windows.

[nowthennet]

For years I have been backing up my ReadyNAS Pro to external harddrives connected to the front USB port on the ReadyNAS. The external harddrives were formatted as NTFS and my backups always had errors as a result. We now have some new, larger harddrives (8TB) and I have formatted my first one as EXT3 using the ReadyNAS admin Frontview. My problem is that I would like to be able to make changes to the folder structure on the external drive, so that I can put different backups into different folders etc.  So, in the past I have been able to do this kind of thing from my Windows server using windows explorer and expanding: My Network Places\readynaspro\usb_hdd_1

I can do this but I had problems with creating folders. So, I downloaded Ext2 File System Driver.  However, this does not seem to have a facility for me to navigate to the usb_hdd_1 to mount that, unless you can tell me otherwise.

So, my question is: Can I view or make changes to the folder structure etc on the external drive while it is connected to the ReadyNAS Pro? If so, how?

All our machines are Windows.

Thank you

[BrianL2]

Hi nowthennet,

I believe you can achieve this by setting Read/write and Allow guest access on the said USB_HDD_1 share in the admin page. Then make the changes to the folder structure (root/sub) using Windows File Explorer.

Kind regards,

BrianL
NETGEAR Community Team

[nowthennet]

Thank you very much for your help.

Once I have created the folder structure necessary for storing my different backups, I would like to set it to read only.  My question is, will my backup work if I do that?  My backup is set to perform a full backup for the initial backup and then to perform incremental backups after that.  Now, it seems that the way the ReadyNAS understands incremental backups is to just compare the backup source with the backup destination and to replace backup destination files that have now changed, with the new versions of the files in the backup source....SO, when it comes to synchronise files from the source to the destination then it has to delete the old source file.  Will it be able to do that if the share is set to be READ ONLY?

Thank you

[StephenB]

If the source shares are on the NAS and the destination drive is connected to the NAS, AND you are not using a Windows, FTP, NFS, or RSYNC for the backup protocol then you should be able to set the network access to read-only - since the NAS backup job isn't using the network.  You'll want to leave the file permissions alone. 

[nowthennet]

How do you set the network access to read only?

Thanks

[StephenB]

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@nowthennet wrote:

How do you set the network access to read only?

The CIFS tab for the share.

[nowthennet]

Are you talking about these settings?

[StephenB]

Yes.  And leaving the ones in "advanced options" alone.

[BrianL2]

Hi nowthennet,

Just wanted to know if you're able to achieve the setup that you wanted on your ReadyNAS USB share and it's backup job?

Kind regards,

BrianL
NETGEAR Community Team

[nowthennet]

I 

[BrianL2]

Hi nowthennet,

It appears that you haven't composed your message or reply properly. Kindly update this thread again as soon as you can.

Kind regards,

BrianL

NETGEAR Community Team
 

[nowthennet]

Sorry about that. I don't know what happened there.

I have been able to set the file access as read/write. Everything is working as I would expect there. However I have not limited network access yet. I wanted to make sure that I was able to get a full backup first. However, I have become completely stuck on that. In the past I have managed to create a full backup to an NTFS drive in about 1-2 days. I was expecting ext3 to be quicker but it took 4 days and then it failed and stopped, having completed less than a quarter of the backup. I have set that backup going again. It is still ridiculously slow. I haven't used this drive in NTFS so I can't make this comparison.

Should I find that ext3 is quicker?

[StephenB]

ext3 definitely should be quicker.  It might be good to check on the disk health.

FWIW the fastest backup for your NAS is over gigabit ethernet to a PC.

[nowthennet]

I have connected the external drive to a PC and reformatted it using MiniTool Partition Wizard.  It has been successful so maybe that is a good sign for the health of the drive.  Is there anything else I should use to check the drive health?

Your idea about using a PC is interesting.  Shame PCs aren't as small as external drives...so they can be easily rotated.

[StephenB]

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@nowthennet wrote:

Your idea about using a PC is interesting.  Shame PCs aren't as small as external drives...so they can be easily rotated.

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You can connect USB 3.0 drives to the PC and back up over the network.  that's faster than using the USB 2 ports on the NAS.