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[lindababy]

Hi,

I know this seems like I'm missing out on some of the benefits of a NAS, but I really just want to use it as a networked drive that can share files with all of the machines on my network. I don't want to use RAID, backup programs, etc. I simply want to install (2) 1 or 2 TB hard drives into the dlink - 1 I will copy data to or create new data on, and the other will simply be a manually copied or rsync'd copy of the data on the first drive. I don't want to worry about complicated permissions or having to recover the data after using a backup program. I would like to be able to take take the NAS anywhere, attach it and have it be read by another set of machines. In other words, be able to read the data without installing extra software. Or, be able to remove one of the disks and be able to stick in into a tower and have it be immediately readable/writable, assuming I have formatted the drive with the correct filesystem, of course. Is this possible? I guess this is sometimes referred to as JBOD (NOT the raid flavor).

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Don't worry about 'backups' I can address that separately. Every time I ask a question like this, I wind up getting a lecture about backups. Understood.

Thanks!

-Linda

[gunrunnerjohn]

Actually, you do NOT want JBOD, but rather simply independent drives. JBOD actually combines them into one big volume, but it has the huge disadvantage that if you lose one drive, you almost surely lose all the contents of both drives.

The default for the DNS-323 is running "wide open", which is the mode it sounds like you desire.

Install the pair of new drives (unformatted), and select the proper format, that would be individual drives, and you're off and running.

You will have to have an EXT2/EXT3 driver on whatever machine you connect the drive to, since you can't format the internal drives with FAT32 or NTFS.

Did I mention backups? 

[lindababy]

Heh, yeah you did

Ok, thanks for the clarification - I've seen JBOD defined 2 ways (wikipedia)

all disks being independently addressed, with no collective properties – each physical disk, with all the logical partitions each may contain, being mapped to a different logical volume: just a bunch of disks.

or

concatenation, where all the physical disks are concatenated and presented as a single disk.

you answered my question - I plan to format each drive independently with mac os extended FS - thank you so much for your response!

Regards,

Linda

[JoeSchmuck]

I'm not heavy on Mac use but the NAS formats the drives itself.  It will format in Ext2 or Ext3 (your choice).  If you install a drive that was formatted on a different system, I suspect the NAS will want to reformat the drives before they can be used.  So, if you really want to format the drives on your Mac first and then put them into the NAS, make sure you can afford to lose the data on the drive, if you have any that is.  If you are able to format the drives on your Mac and the NAS not fuss about it, please post those facts.  Someone will want to know besides me.

However, once the drive has been formated on the NAS, you can mount it to a system and read/write to the drive and then put it back into the NAS and it work without asking to reformat the drive.  I have done this using Knopix once and I did post detailed instructions on how to do this somewhere on this forum.

-Joe

[gunrunnerjohn]

Go with EXT3, it's more robust than EXT2 in the case of power failure or other sudden hang.

[lindababy]

How come it doesn't allow you to format in a FS other than ext3, especially since I'm not using any features except for the network? thanks!

[gunrunnerjohn]

You're accessing disks that are controlled by a Linux operating system, you need to be using a filesystem that Linux understands.  Same reason you don't format your boot disk on Windows with EXT3.

[lindababy]

ok, when you say controlled you mean the OS within the NAS, yes?

Thanks!

[gunrunnerjohn]

Correct, the disks are actually managed by the host O/S, networking is independent of the type of filesystem on the server.