DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

oldcotton · 2008-04-15 02:56:01

Another linux newbie question for experts:

1. I'm planning to install six (6) USB external hard drives to DNS-323 via a D-Link 7-port USB 2.0 HUB. Is it possible?

2. If yes, is it technically difficult comparing with installing only one? I'm a linux newbie.

3. Whether these USB external HDs can be formatted in NTFS? Or they must be formatted in ext3?

Thanks in advance for any input.

Cheers,
oldcotton

Last edited by oldcotton (2008-04-15 03:14:42)

frodo · 2008-04-15 03:23:43

1) Probably - however performance will be horrible

2) No

3) EXT2/3

oldcotton · 2008-04-15 03:42:23

Thank you very much for your lightning response. I maybe give up due to the following reasons:

1. As you've pointed out, the performance maybe horrible.
2. NTFS is not applicable. I want to format them as NTFS because all my HD enclosures are comes with eSATA/USB interface. If NTFS is possible, I can also connect the HDs to my main PC via eSATA for higher speed.

Thanks again for your very helpful info.

mig · 2008-04-15 08:06:19

oldcotton, if you format your drives as ext2/3 you can read them on a winXP system
with this software http://www.fs-driver.org/ -- full access to Linux Ext2 volumes
(read access and write access).

Just curious, how are you planning to use 6 USB disks? If you are not accessing them
all (or multiple disks) at the same time, I don't think there would be a significant performance
loss, as compared to accessing only one USB disk.

diamond187 · 2008-04-15 22:53:51

oldcotton wrote:
Another linux newbie question for experts:

1. I'm planning to install six (6) USB external hard drives to DNS-323 via a D-Link 7-port USB 2.0 HUB. Is it possible?

2. If yes, is it technically difficult comparing with installing only one? I'm a linux newbie.

3. Whether these USB external HDs can be formatted in NTFS? Or they must be formatted in ext3?

Thanks in advance for any input.

Cheers,
oldcotton

1. Yes, you can do this... I'd probably work fine for general purpose multimedia sharing; however, if you're looking to have a heavy data load on them I wouldn't suggest it as the constraints on both the CPU and USB ports would come into play.

2. Nope. If you can 'figure out' one, you can do 6... simply use a multi-drive fun_plug script or copy/paste the lines with /sda to /sdb /sdc /sdd /sde etc

3. NTFS can be READ on these units, but to my knowledge there isn't a stable writable driver yet. Either way, I'd suggest in the case of the eSata enclosures doing a fat32 if you are wanting portability at a little drive space and overhead expense.

EXT2/3 is a far better file system, but lacks the easily-portable (plug it in at the friends house style) nature of NTFS or FAT filesystems.

oldcotton · 2008-04-16 00:56:13

Thanks mig and diamond187!

Now I changed my mind again. I think I will still do it. So 2 more questions come out:

1. My main purpose is to stream multimedia files plus a little bit data backup (daily routine, probably 100MB per day). So performance may not be a problem. However, I still want to know the performance. Let's say I connect only one USB HD to DNS-323. In this case, when I access the files in the USB HD using my desktop PC (USB HD connected to DNS-323, NOT to desktop PC via USB directly), what kind of read/write speed can I expect? Currently I'm using a 100MB/s switch for home network.

2. Sometimes I may want to connect the external HDs to desktop PC directly via eSATA for higher speed. That's the reason why I want to format them as NTFS. But it looks like no stable driver yet. I don't consider FAT32 since the maximum file size is 4GB in FAT32 and I have lots of HDTV files with sizes over 4GB. I just got another idea: Just format the USB HDs as ext2/3. When connecting them to Windows PC via eSATA, I can use http://www.fs-driver.org/ to get full access (thanks mig). Is this doable?

Any input is welcome! Thank you.

Last edited by oldcotton (2008-04-16 00:56:33)

mig · 2008-04-16 09:54:55

I don't have a USB hard drive attached to my DNS-323 so I have no
personal knowedge of performance; however, this thread talks a bit
about USB performance http://dns323.kood.org/forum/t2007-tran … rk%3F.html
and this one http://dns323.kood.org/forum/t764-usb-s … ed%3F.html

Last edited by mig (2008-04-16 09:59:45)

Megabug · 2008-04-17 10:07:52

Hi,

My USB Performance:

hdparm -t /dev/sdb2 says

/dev/sdb2:
Timing buffered disk reads: 55 MB in 3.00 seconds = 18719 kB/s

DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

Announcement

#1 2008-04-15 02:56:01

Is it possible mount several (maybe 6) USB ext HD to DNS 323 vis HUB?

#2 2008-04-15 03:23:43

Re: Is it possible mount several (maybe 6) USB ext HD to DNS 323 vis HUB?

#3 2008-04-15 03:42:23

Re: Is it possible mount several (maybe 6) USB ext HD to DNS 323 vis HUB?

#4 2008-04-15 08:06:19

Re: Is it possible mount several (maybe 6) USB ext HD to DNS 323 vis HUB?

#5 2008-04-15 22:53:51

Re: Is it possible mount several (maybe 6) USB ext HD to DNS 323 vis HUB?

oldcotton wrote:

#6 2008-04-16 00:56:13

Re: Is it possible mount several (maybe 6) USB ext HD to DNS 323 vis HUB?

#7 2008-04-16 09:54:55

Re: Is it possible mount several (maybe 6) USB ext HD to DNS 323 vis HUB?

#8 2008-04-17 10:07:52

Re: Is it possible mount several (maybe 6) USB ext HD to DNS 323 vis HUB?

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