Author Topic: DRIVE Station 4 Tb as a single drive with raid 5  (Read 7901 times)

Memoryman

  • El Toro
  • ****
  • Posts: 279
Re: DRIVE Station 4 Tb as a single drive with raid 5
« Reply #15 on: November 12, 2009, 10:21:58 AM »
   

bump


b_hammer

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 6
Re: DRIVE Station 4 Tb as a single drive with raid 5
« Reply #16 on: November 16, 2009, 04:45:15 PM »
   

I just spoke with the fine folks at Buffalo Tech Support.  They said that if I follow these steps, I will end up with a 2.7 TB RAID 5 NTFS partition for use on my Linux box:

 

1. Connect the drive to a Vista or Windows 7 computer.

2. Run the Buffalo RAID setup utility.

3. Configure the drive for RAID 5 and let it complete.

4. Format the drive as a single NTFS partition using the Disk Setup Utility in Vista or Windows 7.

5. Disconnect and connect to my Linux box (that already has all the drivers ready to read NTFS).

 

Caveat:  You can't connect this drive to an XP box because XP can't handle partitions larger than 2TB.  I assume this also applies to a SMB mount on XP as well.  Since I have multiple XP computers on my network, I may end up using 2 partitions rather than one.

 

I will be purchasing one of these drives soon, so we will see how it goes.

 

 


b_hammer

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 6
Re: DRIVE Station 4 Tb as a single drive with raid 5
« Reply #17 on: December 08, 2009, 11:35:28 PM »
   

The Drivestation 4TB arrived today.  It came preformatted in RAID 5 mode with two disks - a 2.0 TB and 750 GB disk. 

 

1) Hook the Drivestation up to a Vista computer using the USB cable.

2) Run the Install program and select Change RAID.

3) Select RAID 5 (yes, I know it already had RAID 5, but I couldn't format the drive as one partition without doing this).

4) Select NTFS (not NTFS-Compatible which apparently has a 2.0 GB limit).

5) Voila, I now have a 2.79384 TB NTFS RAID 5 drive.  I didn't even have to use the Vista Disk Utility to format the drive.

 

I plan to hook it up to my Linux box via eSATA and then share it on my network via Samba (SMB).  Based on Google searches, I believe that my XP boxes will be able to connect and see the entire volume over the network without a 2TB limit.

 

 


b_hammer

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 6
Re: DRIVE Station 4 Tb as a single drive with raid 5
« Reply #18 on: December 08, 2009, 11:44:34 PM »
   

BTW, I notice that the LED above Drive 1 on the unit is flashing red while the power, Drive 2, Drive 3, and Drive 4 LEDs are all solid green.  I don't know exactly what this means, but the drive appears to be working.  We'll see what the LEDs look like in the morning.


b_hammer

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 6
Re: DRIVE Station 4 Tb as a single drive with raid 5
« Reply #19 on: December 09, 2009, 08:45:14 AM »
   

(continuing from previous posts)

 

OK.  In the morning, all the LEDs were solid green.

 

BTW, be sure to rename your new, large NTFS volume to whatever you want it to be while still connected to Vista.

 

Also, you might want to lift the front cover of your new drive (two small tabs below the front plastic face) and check the drives.  Mine were all laying sideways - evidence of a hard drop somewhere.  :^(

 

The drives in my 4.0 TB HD-QS4.0TSU2/R5 (4TB DriveStation Quattro TurboUSB) are Hitachi HDT721010SLA360.  SATA 3.0 Gb/s.  RPM: 7200

 

I connected the newly partitioned Drivestation to my Linux box with the eSata cable.  I fired up the computer.  I am already running ntfs-3g, so my computer can read and write NTFS volumes.  Next, I checked to see how the computer saw the drive.  fdisk -l isn't reliable above 2GB partitions, so I used parted.

 

User> parted

(parted) print all

 

Model: ATA BUFFALO HD-QSSU2 (scsi)

Disk /dev/sdb: 3000GB

Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B

Partition Table: gpt

 

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name                          Flags

 1      17.4kB  134MB   134MB                Microsoft reserved partition  msftres

 2      135MB   3000GB  3000GB  ntfs         Basic data partition              

 

All looks good.  I added this drive to my Samba configuration and my Windows XP box can see the drive over the network.  I don't know how to use XP to find out the file size of a SMB mounted drive, so I can't verify that the XP box will be able to see more than 2GB, but I am confident that it will.

 

Now the copying from my old non-RAID drives to my new RAID drive begins.....

 

 

 

 


b_hammer

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 6
Re: DRIVE Station 4 Tb as a single drive with raid 5
« Reply #20 on: December 09, 2009, 08:51:34 AM »
   

Final notes:

 

When this drive is connected to XP there is a 2GB size limit.  The drive comes formatted as a 2TB drive and a 750 GB drive configured for RAID 5.

 

If you hook up the drive using the eSATA cable, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SEE THE 750GB drive!

 

Let me say that again.  If you buy a 4TB DriveStation Quattro and want to use eSATA in XP, you will only get a 2TB drive.

 

If you hook up the drive using the USB cable, you will see both the 2GB and the 750GB drive.