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[pwanghk]

Greetings:

I currently have an existing external 1TB HDD with about 750GB of movies files.  Instead of wasting my time to copy the movies files to the new 1TB installed in the NAS device HDD0 slot, I wonder if it is possible to hook up the existing drive directly to the 321 without reformatting the drive?

Thanks in advance for your time and help.

[gunrunnerjohn]

Well, unless it's formatted in Linux EXT2/EXT3 format, it's a positive no.  Even then it may be problematic, but at least there's a chance it would work.

Personally, I'd simply format it and copy the data back.

[pwanghk]

Thank you for your comments and input.

The NAS is not as flexible as I expected.  I thought I can plug any existing drive to this NAS and still be able to preserve my data.  Is there a particular reason the device has to format the HDD in Linux?

Anyway, copy is painfully slow between the external USB HDD and specially with the 100mb router.  Almost 2 hours for 34GB files at ~10MB/s.  Beside upgrade my router to a Gigabit type, do you have any other suggestion to speed up the copy files processes?

By the way, I wonder if an NAS with an e-Sata input exist.  If it does, this could solve my problem.

[gunrunnerjohn]

Well, since the box is Linux based, so it uses a Linux filesystem.  You'll find that a vast majority of these NAS boxes in this price range are the same way.

As far as speed, you can simply put a $25 gigabit switch in front of the router and connect the computers and NAS to that, with jumbo frames you'll probably double your speeds.

[pwanghk]

Thank you for your valuable suggestion.

From your comment, I will need to connect PCs, NAS, and my current 100mb router to a gigabit switch.  Am I understand correctly?  If so, will I still be able to share my internet connection between PCs?

Even doubling the transfer speed using gigabit switch, it's still by far unmatched the e-Sata / Sata connection.

[gunrunnerjohn]

Yes, connect everything including the router to the gigabit switch.

It is very unrealistic to expect SATA speeds from a networked box that cost less than $100, that's simply not going to happen.  If you need SATA speeds, connect another internal drive or use an eSATA drive for external use.