NASLite Network Attached Storage

After much self-inflicted stupidity I finally got the software up and running on a new box with a Seagate 3tb drive - HDD install. I formatted the drive 0 with the operating system on it via NAS2 and all seems to be working well.

However, I see that the system is seeing Disc 0 as 734.6gb. That should be about 2.7 gb, not 0.7gb by my estimate.
Is it because it's a very large disk? Before buying the software I seemed to remember reading that all was good wrt large disks.

Is this something to worry about or not an issue?

See more info below from NAS about Disk 0


Disk-0 Hardware Details:

MODEL: ST3000DM001-9YN166, SN# Z1F0C6R1, v.CC4C
INTERFACE: DEVICE-SDA, HOST-1, BUS-0, TARGET-0, LUN-0

Filesystem Details:



tune2fs 1.40.4 (31-Dec-2007)
Filesystem volume name: NASLite-SE000131
Last mounted on:
Filesystem UUID: 2e81de5e-8170-4090-80b1-f9948d23380e
Filesystem magic number: 0xEF53
Filesystem revision #: 1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features: has_journal resize_inode dir_index filetype needs_recovery sparse_super large_file
Filesystem flags: signed directory hash
Default mount options: (none)
Filesystem state: clean
Errors behavior: Continue
Filesystem OS type: Linux
Inode count: 97845248
Block count: 195683748
Reserved block count: 0
Free blocks: 192562881
Free inodes: 97845236
First block: 0
Block size: 4096
Fragment size: 4096
Reserved GDT blocks: 977
Blocks per group: 32768
Fragments per group: 32768
Inodes per group: 16384
Inode blocks per group: 512
Filesystem created: Wed Aug 22 16:10:38 2012
Last mount time: Wed Aug 22 16:24:07 2012
Last write time: Wed Aug 22 18:17:41 2012
Mount count: 1
Maximum mount count: 28
Last checked: Wed Aug 22 16:10:38 2012
Check interval: 15552000 (6 months)
Next check after: Mon Feb 18 16:10:38 2013
Reserved blocks uid: 0 (user admin)
Reserved blocks gid: 0 (group admin)
First inode: 11
Inode size: 128
Journal inode: 8
Default directory hash: tea
Directory Hash Seed: 4ed6fb13-4934-4fe2-b1fd-a89341710715
Journal backup: inode blocks

Couple of things:

• I'm not sure it's a good idea to boot off 3TB drive where you store your data. A better option is to boot from USB so the data drives are portable and not subject to the BIOS.
• The capacity issue can be caused by the controller, the BIOS or drive firmware settings. It may well be rectified most effectively by observing the item above.

Hope that helps.

Thanks Tony. I didn't want to run the system from a usb device at all for a number of reasons, including young children who may think that pulling a device out of the back of a home server is a great idea.

I wanted a seamless server without bits sticking out of it to make it work properly.

That said, I've purchased a small USB drive which is hopefully small enough to be ignored by small fingers and navigated an awful set of Bios features to try and get the blasted thing to boot from USB.

Finally done and yes, drive is reading as 2.7 TB.

Thanks for your help.

Hi Alistair

Just to make you sleep better there will be no consequences if the USB stick is taken out. The only time it is read and used is when the server boots and when you save your NL configuration. Once the boot is finished, the USB is totally ignored by NL.

If you boot and let run the server 24/24, you can even take off the USB stick and store where kids won't play with it.

Another option, if the motherboard has an internal USB connection free, you can put the stick there.

Regards

Robby

Thanks Robby

Interesting to know that they mean what they say that it boots into RAM. I think it's sorted now though and to be fair, booting from a USB flash drive must be way better than a drive with moving parts which will certainly fail at some point.

Regards
Alistair

Yes, I have my NL booting from the USB drive for more than 6, 7 years and it works still great.

The best part of the USB (or internal compact flash drive) is that the OS and data are on 2 different drives and if in the future NL needs more space, you don't need to touch the data drive.

You can even have a copy of the OS drive (just in case...).

Robby

If still worried that it may be removed accidently (and maybe lost) you could get one of the addapters that allow you to put it onto a MB header inside the case.