Setup of USB-connected External Drive

[ZzyzxOh]

I am looking to attach a 3TB USB3 External Drive to the Camect unit, but I do not see the instructions on the Welcome or Additional Details pages. I do see the NAS, however. Perhaps I am missing where it is mentioned.

1. Does the drive need to be pre-formatted to be seen by the Camect? 

2. Will a USB-connected drive slow does the video capture of the Camect or in any way reduce its performance capacities?

3. If pre-formatted, is "ext4" the preferred format? Can the entire device be used (/dev/sdb versus /dev/sdb1)?

Thank you.

[CamectArup]

You're right. We haven't documented this part yet. 

You plug the drive in, and it should be detected and show up on the storage tab. You then use the "eraser" icon to format the drive, and that makes it usable. I forget, but after formatting you might need to check the checkbox next to its entry on the storage tab get it to be used. 

[CamectArup]

P.S. Adding the drive should not affect performance as long as it's a good-quality USB 3.0 drive, with the possible exception that it will take a little longer for the timeline data to become available in the UI after a restart. (That's because it needs to scan more footage, and the data isn't visible in the UI until the scan is done.) 

Make sure to plug it into a USB 3.0 port (i.e. one of the blue ones). 

[ZzyzxOh]

Thank you for the always-excellent support.

I decided to use a Seagate Backup Plus 4TB USB3 drive. This eliminates the additional power cube of the typical expansion drive box. When I first connected it the existing two partitions showed from the Seagate and reformatting cleaned that up, although it defaults to only using /dev/sdc1 and beyond, rather than the entire drive (/dev/sdc) so I lose a few GB there. But it seems to be added fine.

Does the system require a reboot to utilize it? I am within 10's of GB of filling the internal drive and was expecting to see more consumption of the external over the last few hours.

[CamectArup]

On Saturday, February 1, 2020 at 5:55:23 PM UTC-8, ZzyzxOh wrote:

Thank you for the always-excellent support.

I decided to use a Seagate Backup Plus 4TB USB3 drive. This eliminates the additional power cube of the typical expansion drive box. When I first connected it the existing two partitions showed from the Seagate and reformatting cleaned that up, although it defaults to only using /dev/sdc1 and beyond, rather than the entire drive (/dev/sdc) so I lose a few GB there. But it seems to be added fine.

Does the system require a reboot to utilize it? I am within 10's of GB of filling the internal drive and was expecting to see more consumption of the external over the last few hours.

On the disks tab, is the checkbox to the left of /dev/sdc1 checked, and are you seeing a message about how much space is available ("XXX free of YYY")? If so, the new disk should be in use. If you want to be absolutely sure you could restart (home settings > show advanced settings > restart) and make sure it's still checked and showing free space after the restart -- or you can use Report Bug checking the checkboxes to include logs from the device, and we can take a look to make sure it's working as intended. 

[ZzyzxOh]

Everything is fine without a reboot.

The checkboxes you mentioned were set as you described (following the format). I just needed to wait over-night for more video to be captured and it began to consume space on the external drive.