Good morning.
Is it possible to configure the Drivestation 4 Tb as a single drive with RAID 5 ?
We will use it with Linux so we have no 2 Tb limit...
If you're using the Raid Utility and selecting RAID 5, you're saying it created two volumes?
If this is the case, provide your operating system please, you may be running into a Windows limitation here.
Exactly !
We'are using Windows XP,and when i select raid 5 in the tools, it create always 2 drives.
But, if the tool run only on Windows environment, does this mean that raid 5 with a single 3 Tb volume is not possible ?
I use Ubuntu Linux, but the setup utility does not exist for this operating system, so i have to setup my Quattro drive with Xp...
The problem is that the 2 logical drives (D: and E:) are seen as two partitions on two phisical disk, also on Win XP.
When i connect i with Linux i see two phisical drives againd (/dev/sdd and /dev/sde) everyone with a single partition on it (/dev/sdd1 and /dev/sde1).
Ok, that's not right. Let me test this, I'll get back to you.
Could you reboot the machine with the drivestation attached, then PM me the output of "dmesg"?
Did you come to a solution on this matter? Maybe there is a new software released? Becouse no matter how hard i try to build only one partition (in winXP) on 4TB drivestation it always ends up creating two of them!!
I'm greatfull for all help.
Vesja, Windows XP 32-bit is limited to 2TB partitions. XP 64-bit, Server 2003 64-bit, Server 2003 RC1, Vista and Server 2008 do not have this restriction when using GUID partition table (GPT). To my knowledge, Microsoft has no plans to update 32-bit XP to use GPT, so this issue will remain.
paolopoletti, it looks like your issue is related to the MBR partition. MBR partitions are a maximum of 2TB in size. You'll need to delete the partitions, and change the partition map to use GUID Partition Table (GPT) instead of MBR.
Hi,
I tried everything which has been suggested in here and elsewhere in order to created one 2.7Tb partition for Linux (CentOS) with no success. I even configured it in MacOSX without the 2tb limit and still same limitations. GPT can be used but it sees one phyisical drive of 2199Gb. Limitation seems to be coming from the way the internal OS (some sort of unix derivative I suspect) configuring the drives and unless we hack into the internal OS we will not be able to do what we want to do. The other option is that Buffalo can release a linux version of the config. sw which allows you to create one full size RAID5 partition.
Thanks
Koray
Has there been a solution to this issue? I am interested in purchasing the Drivestation Quattro Turbo USB 4TB model for my Linux MythTV system. I would like one Raid 5 partition with close to 3TB of storage space. I currently plan on using NTFS as the file system for compatibility with the rest of my network, and connecting it to my Linux box via eSata or possibly USB 2.0. I have other computers on my network running Mac OS X, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and of course Linux which could be used to run the Raid setup utility I keep reading about.
If I buy this device, can I set it up for one Raid 5 partition?
bump
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.
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.
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.
(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.....
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.