Post by rjes on Sept 16, 2009 20:51:53 GMT 7
I have had an N3200 for some time, and want to add the ability to take back ups on an external HDD easily. It ha sthe latest firmware. The external HDD will only be plugged in while backing up, then be kept elsewhere to make my data storage as safe as possible, which sounded easy - until I tried......
I have just bought a Lacie Rugged XL eSATA 1TB external drive to use for this. However, I'm confused, and have some questions I hope someone can answer for me:
Can anyone tell me what standard the drive partition formatted by the Thecus web interface is? As a mapped drive from my PC it appears as NTFS. However, according to the N3200 user manual, an NTFS partition should be read only, yet I can write to it too. When I plug the external drive in to another PC via USB, it is not recognised. I assume this is because it contains some sort of Linux only partition (XFS?
), and that mapping to it when it's plugged in to the N3200 makes it appear as NTFS even though it isn't really?
After buying the eSATA external drive, I was a little horrified to read that NTFS partitions are read only to the N3200. I need the data on the backup eSATA drive to be readable What format do Thecus expect you to use to back up large quantities of data fron the raid array to an external drive? I don't store very large files, so FAT32 would be OK in that respect, but isnt a 1TB drive way bigger than you can format as FAT32 anyway?
I have no other linux equipment or anything else with an eSATA port. If my N3200 or it's raid controller fails, and all the backup data on the external drive is in a format which can only be read by linux, it's as good as useless to me.
I believe NTFS is incompatible with Linux? If so, why does the eSATA drive appear as NTFS from windows XP Pro?
Why is the drive I mapped from my PC to the eSATA external HDD visible and writeable even when the eSATA drive is not even plugged in? Does the N3200 keep a synchronised copy of the data or something similar? If so why? I don't want it to, as it's wasting space in my RAID 5 array. Because of the above mentioned problems seeing the data on the eSATA drive with any of my other equipment, I don't actually know that there is any data at all on the drive.
The Thecus backup utility doesn't seem to work. However, it looks quite basic. What are other people using? Is Acronis True Image OK with the N3200?
Thanks,
UPDATE: I just realised that some of my questions are answered by a similar thread which I had missed elsewhere in this section of the forum. Apparently tools exist which allow the Linux partition created by the N3200 to be read on a PC. This would allow me to recover the data if my N3200 failed. This is not ideal, but better than nothing. Before I go downloading tools and trying, can anyone confirm what file system the N3200 will format the drive to - ext3?
Also, I'd like a partition on my eSATA drive which is formatted as FAT32 or NTFS too, but the 'Format' feature in the N3200 seems to delete all existing partitions and create one big one. Is there a tool I can use from a PC to format a partition to something that the N3200 will recognise (ext3?)?
Thanks,
Richard
I have just bought a Lacie Rugged XL eSATA 1TB external drive to use for this. However, I'm confused, and have some questions I hope someone can answer for me:
Can anyone tell me what standard the drive partition formatted by the Thecus web interface is? As a mapped drive from my PC it appears as NTFS. However, according to the N3200 user manual, an NTFS partition should be read only, yet I can write to it too. When I plug the external drive in to another PC via USB, it is not recognised. I assume this is because it contains some sort of Linux only partition (XFS?
), and that mapping to it when it's plugged in to the N3200 makes it appear as NTFS even though it isn't really?After buying the eSATA external drive, I was a little horrified to read that NTFS partitions are read only to the N3200. I need the data on the backup eSATA drive to be readable What format do Thecus expect you to use to back up large quantities of data fron the raid array to an external drive? I don't store very large files, so FAT32 would be OK in that respect, but isnt a 1TB drive way bigger than you can format as FAT32 anyway?
I have no other linux equipment or anything else with an eSATA port. If my N3200 or it's raid controller fails, and all the backup data on the external drive is in a format which can only be read by linux, it's as good as useless to me.
I believe NTFS is incompatible with Linux? If so, why does the eSATA drive appear as NTFS from windows XP Pro?
Why is the drive I mapped from my PC to the eSATA external HDD visible and writeable even when the eSATA drive is not even plugged in? Does the N3200 keep a synchronised copy of the data or something similar? If so why? I don't want it to, as it's wasting space in my RAID 5 array. Because of the above mentioned problems seeing the data on the eSATA drive with any of my other equipment, I don't actually know that there is any data at all on the drive.
The Thecus backup utility doesn't seem to work. However, it looks quite basic. What are other people using? Is Acronis True Image OK with the N3200?
Thanks,
UPDATE: I just realised that some of my questions are answered by a similar thread which I had missed elsewhere in this section of the forum. Apparently tools exist which allow the Linux partition created by the N3200 to be read on a PC. This would allow me to recover the data if my N3200 failed. This is not ideal, but better than nothing. Before I go downloading tools and trying, can anyone confirm what file system the N3200 will format the drive to - ext3?
Also, I'd like a partition on my eSATA drive which is formatted as FAT32 or NTFS too, but the 'Format' feature in the N3200 seems to delete all existing partitions and create one big one. Is there a tool I can use from a PC to format a partition to something that the N3200 will recognise (ext3?)?
Thanks,
Richard