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[thehawk75]

Is there any way to use an existing HDD without having to re-format my drive for the DNS-320 to use it?

The manual says NTFS and FAT32 are not supported -- which is fine, I'm using ext4.  I believe I read somewhere that the newest firmware (2.02) does support ext4.

Plugging in the existing drive, in my DNS-320 (v 2.02) clearly does not work.  My only options are to 'set raid type and Re-format'.  Since I have nearly 2 TB of data, I really don't want to have to do that.

This was never a boot device on my linux system.  Just a big ext4 partition.  Could I make the volume label, and/or directory structure look like something the DNS-320 would like, and thus it become use-able without the need to re-format?

Any help is appreciated.

[albuemil]

The best and safest way is to get a backup disk (for example borrow one from your friends), copy the data over and let the NAS format the HDD as it wants to, that way you would be certain the HDD will be correctly recognized and there won't be any nasty surprises later on.

As I've posted in the Strange way of partitioning the HDDs thread, in my case the NAS created a 500Mb Ext3 partition, another 500Mb Swap partition, most of the rest was for the data itself and the last 1Gb remained unallocated.

I really advice against doing this, but you might try to make your partitions in a similar way, but there's no guaranty that it will work since the NAS might make different partitions depending on the HDD used and I think it also writes some data in the first partition. Also, messing with the partitions CAN GET YOUR DATA ERASED/DESTROYED.

[thehawk75]

Yeah, I knew I could ultimately back up everything, but, it's nearly 2 TB worth.  Even with 2 drives in the same computer, that will take hours if not days.  Then I'll ultimately have to do the same operation across the network after.

Then there's the matter I don't quite have access to 2 TB to back up to, but, I can likely find the space among all my other drives.  Just a pain.

Ultimately it looks like the easiest thing to do is buy a new 2TB drive earlier than I planned to.  Unfortunately it looks like regular (Non SSD) seem to be going back up in price per unit storage.  I bought my first 2TB drive nearly 2 years ago for $100, and now the same capacity drives are going for $120.  Go figure.

[ivan]

Only if you have an IFS that can read the linux file system installed.

[shabuboy]

Hello,

It scares when I read people using ANY NAS as backup, but only maintain one copy of the files, in the NAS. That is not a real backup. Nevertheless, each person can do as they wish.

Anyway, if you get a new HD, instead of coping the files, do a mirror/ghost. Might be faster than copying the files.

Also, yes, currently the HD prices are way up due to the floods in Thailand. It might not be until Q2 before prices go down.

[JavaLawyer]

Hello,

It scares when I read people using ANY NAS as backup, but only maintain one copy of the files, in the NAS. That is not a real backup. Nevertheless, each person can do as they wish.

Anyway, if you get a new HD, instead of coping the files, do a mirror/ghost. Might be faster than copying the files.

Well put. I encourage those users with only one copy of their data to read the following sticky post on our FAQ board: Data Backup vs. Redundancy