DNS-321 Max HDD Size

[regnm...@gmail.com]

Hello,

Sorry for such a basic question. I have read the FAQ's and have searched extensively but cannot find a definitive answer as to max supported drive size for Alt-F running on a DNS-321. I see posts such as "upgrading to 5tb drives" and I see many blogs/online posts specifying that 3tb drives will work. Can I use 4tb or 5tb drives on a DNS-321 running Alt-F? (I have not purchased the drives yet so I would like to know max supported drive size before I purchase.) Will anything greater than a 5tb drive work? Also, out of curiosity, can someone point me to where that info would be listed/posted because I did search. 

Thanks. 

Also, I fully understand the hardware limitations (small amount of physical memory) of the DNS-321. If possible, I'd like to use 2x 5tb drives in RAID1 (mirror), fill them up with about 4.4tb worth of long-term archive data (just under the 5tb usable drive capacity) and then power off the DNS-321 and let is sit. 

Thanks again. 

[João Cardoso]

On Sunday, 17 January 2016 15:56:47 UTC, regnms wrote:

Hello,

Sorry for such a basic question. I have read the FAQ's and have searched extensively but cannot find a definitive answer as to max supported drive size for Alt-F running on a DNS-321.

The description says "... supports 2/3/4TB disks ..." and in several posts users says that 6TB works fine for them. I have not tested that, however.

If the Disk Wizard or Disk Partitioner fails or incorrectly sets such disks as desired, the issue can be easily corrected using the command line with a couple of simple commands. After partitioning size does not matters, Alt-F will happily handle the disks.

I recently tested Alt-F on a virtual box with virtual 8TB disks and it worked with minor glitches.

I see posts such as "upgrading to 5tb drives" and I see many blogs/online posts specifying that 3tb drives will work. Can I use 4tb or 5tb drives on a DNS-321 running Alt-F? (I have not purchased the drives yet so I would like to know max supported drive size before I purchase.) Will anything greater than a 5tb drive work?

Work? Yes! If the initial Disk Wizard webUI will work, don't know. But as I said, after resorting to the command line for the initial partitioning if needed, they will be handled OK. Share your experience.

 

Also, out of curiosity, can someone point me to where that info would be listed/posted because I did search. 

Descriptions at https://sites.google.com/site/altfirmware/ and https://sourceforge.net/projects/alt-f/,  and searching for "6TB" on this forum top search field gives a lot of anwsers... and you can also add a FAQ or wiki.

PS: read https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt-f/yt5H8LnFmks/kdCqmx0FCXIJ and following and https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt-f/5-dyMSk_DFg/wz7LQUdLfWMJ

[João Cardoso]

On Sunday, 17 January 2016 19:03:29 UTC, João Cardoso wrote:

On Sunday, 17 January 2016 15:56:47 UTC, regnms wrote:

Hello,

Sorry for such a basic question. I have read the FAQ's and have searched extensively but cannot find a definitive answer as to max supported drive size for Alt-F running on a DNS-321.

The description says "... supports 2/3/4TB disks ..." and in several posts users says that 6TB works fine for them. I have not tested that, however.

If the Disk Wizard or Disk Partitioner fails or incorrectly sets such disks as desired, the issue can be easily corrected using the command line with a couple of simple commands. After partitioning size does not matters, Alt-F will happily handle the disks.

I recently tested Alt-F on a virtual box with virtual 8TB disks and it worked with minor glitches.

I see posts such as "upgrading to 5tb drives" and I see many blogs/online posts specifying that 3tb drives will work. Can I use 4tb or 5tb drives on a DNS-321 running Alt-F? (I have not purchased the drives yet so I would like to know max supported drive size before I purchase.) Will anything greater than a 5tb drive work?

Work? Yes! If the initial Disk Wizard webUI will work, don't know. But as I said, after resorting to the command line for the initial partitioning if needed, they will be handled OK. Share your experience.

Well, there is something that I can't test, and that is the box file usage pattern.

If you use the 5TB filesystem to store 5000 1GB video files, there will be no issues; but if you use it to store 50 millions of small 100KB picture files organized in some thousand folders, problems can arise.

The possible issue is related with lack of memory to perform a filesystem check. The amount of needed memory is related with the number of files, folders, and how they are organized. That's why every disk must have a swap partition at its beginning, to artificially rise the amount of existing memory from the meager 64MB of RAM the dns-323 has (or even the 256MB of a dns-325), to 1 or 2GB of (virtual) memory.

[Reg NMS]

I guess to be much more clear, I am specifically asking about the DNS-321. I understand that some may have gotten nTB disks to work virtually however I am asking about in practice, what is the max supported (and recommended) size drive to be put into a DNS-321 running alt-f?

Thanks. 

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 1:21 PM, João Cardoso <whoami...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, 17 January 2016 19:03:29 UTC, João Cardoso wrote:

On Sunday, 17 January 2016 15:56:47 UTC, regnms wrote:

Hello,

Sorry for such a basic question. I have read the FAQ's and have searched extensively but cannot find a definitive answer as to max supported drive size for Alt-F running on a DNS-321.

The description says "... supports 2/3/4TB disks ..." and in several posts users says that 6TB works fine for them. I have not tested that, however.

If the Disk Wizard or Disk Partitioner fails or incorrectly sets such disks as desired, the issue can be easily corrected using the command line with a couple of simple commands. After partitioning size does not matters, Alt-F will happily handle the disks.

I recently tested Alt-F on a virtual box with virtual 8TB disks and it worked with minor glitches.

I see posts such as "upgrading to 5tb drives" and I see many blogs/online posts specifying that 3tb drives will work. Can I use 4tb or 5tb drives on a DNS-321 running Alt-F? (I have not purchased the drives yet so I would like to know max supported drive size before I purchase.) Will anything greater than a 5tb drive work?

Work? Yes! If the initial Disk Wizard webUI will work, don't know. But as I said, after resorting to the command line for the initial partitioning if needed, they will be handled OK. Share your experience.

Well, there is something that I can't test, and that is the box file usage pattern.

If you use the 5TB filesystem to store 5000 1GB video files, there will be no issues; but if you use it to store 5 millions of small 100KB picture files organized in some thousand folders, problems can arise.

The possible issue is related with lack of memory to perform a filesystem check. The amount of needed memory is related with the number of files, folders, and how they are organized. That's why every disk must have a swap partition at its beginning, to artificially rise the amount of existing memory from the meager 64MB of RAM the dns-323 has (or even the 256MB of a dns-325), to 1 or 2GB of (virtual) memory.

 

Also, out of curiosity, can someone point me to where that info would be listed/posted because I did search. 

Descriptions at https://sites.google.com/site/altfirmware/ and https://sourceforge.net/projects/alt-f/,  and searching for "6TB" on this forum top search field gives a lot of anwsers... and you can also add a FAQ or wiki.

PS: read https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt-f/yt5H8LnFmks/kdCqmx0FCXIJ and following and https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt-f/5-dyMSk_DFg/wz7LQUdLfWMJ

Thanks. 

Also, I fully understand the hardware limitations (small amount of physical memory) of the DNS-321. If possible, I'd like to use 2x 5tb drives in RAID1 (mirror), fill them up with about 4.4tb worth of long-term archive data (just under the 5tb usable drive capacity) and then power off the DNS-321 and let is sit. 

Thanks again. 

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