eSATA Port on a N5200...

[gwoodhouse]

Hello again...

I have another question regarding the use of the eSATA port on a N5200 (Non-Pro)... I have looked at the manual and online forums and cant see much info relating to this feature.

So I'd like to know...

1) Can I connect an external drive to the eSATA port and access the data directly on the N5200 using an SSH session?

2) If this is possible, what disk format does the disk need to be in? or can I format it directly from the N5200?

Just to help clarify things, as detailed in another post I have upgraded my second N5200 to the latest 2.00.01 firmware and now need to shift approx 3Tb of data from my first N5200 to the second one to allow me to drop the array and update the firmware on the first one...

I dont want to have to shift all the data over the network (although it is a gigabit) as this could take ages. The eSATA connection should be much quicker and I have some spare 400Gb disks lying around I could use...

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks
Guy

[Kit Fox]

I have some questions about the eSATA as well, somewhat related.

Is it possible to hook up an external [5 drive] eSATA enclosure and expand the raid through it? Or will it only be seen as external storage for backup purposes/etc? The reason I ask is because it would be more cost effective for me to expand the raid this way than to get a whole second NAS, even if there is a slight performance hit. I couldn't find this anywhere online.

[Thecus - Yvon]

Dear Sir,

The eSATA on N5200/PRO usage as like USB flash disk, thus we must format the eSATA HDD before plug into N5200/PRO, and the FAT/FAT32 for reading/writing or NTFS for reading.

Yvon.

[gwoodhouse]

OK, I had a play around with it last night but didnt have too much luck with it.

As I have some large files (20Gb+) I want to be able to copy the data across to the eSATA disk, so FAT32 isnt really an option given that it has a max file size limit of 4Gb.

How can I reformat the disk to use EXT3?

[yhashkes]

Does this thread help?

thecususergroup.proboards106.com/index.cgi?board=n5200modifications&action=display&thread=1180594056

Quote:

1. Installed SSHD and SYSUSER modules on N5200

2. Installed USB HDD using one of the back USB ports

3. My system automatically mounted the USB disk and it appeared using the df command.

4. I unmounted the USB disk and used fdisk on the device: fdisk /dev/sdf1

5. I deleted all partitions, and created one big one of type Linux (83). I wrote the partition table, exited fdisk

6. I formatted the disk: mke2fs -j /dev/sdf1 (-j uses ext3 instead of ext2)

[gwoodhouse]

Hi Yhaskes,

I have seen that article actually (that forum is blocked at my current work place) and I spent a long evening "playing around" with various commands on my spare N5200.

Whilst I can get around Linux and Unix, they arent on my list of strong points so a lot of what I did was "lets give it a try and see what happens".

The main problem I have seems to be finding the disk and working out where its been mounted. Following Yvon's comments that its treated the same as a USB disk doesnt actually help me find it and copy data to it...

I was able to do the commands listed above and it appeared to cause activity on the disk, but when I moved the disk to the other N5200 and tried to copy data to it, nothing showed up...

Anyway, its all a bit frustrating and I just need to have some time to increase my Linux knowledge and workout whats happening and where.

[ethan.terry]

Hi Friends,

I'm having some trouble with my eSATA connection as well. I've connected the drive (and it shows up in the browser under the eSATA heading) bringing my total storage capacity up to 2,623,164. However, I can not acess the space on this drive! What else do I need to do to set it up? I've read through the previous posts stating that eSATA drives show up like a USB flash, but it's not recognized as the USBHDD. Why is it showing up in the browser, but can't be accessed?

The drive is FAT32 formatted.

Any help is most appreciated! Thanks in advance!

[zia_bhatti]

BUMP.

Yvon, please respond to this issue. I also have an eSATA enclosure (another Thecus unit) attached and I would like to copy/move files between the two units.

Thanks.

[Thecus - Yvon]

Dear Zia bhatti,

Here we get some possible issue lead the eSATA abnormal, we would join this fix with next verison firmware together, thank for your patience in advance.

Yvon.