Biggest disk supported - 1TB, 750GB, 500GB or just 250GB ?

[formesyn]

I've got a NSLU2 with Unslung 6.8 and it has been working well for
over a year, attached to a 250GB disk on USB2.

However, I need to add some more storage - and have been looking into
a getting a second HDD to attach and natively format. Alternatively, I
could replace the single disk+ enclosure it currently has and upgrade
that ( as per Bryan's recent posts ..) but don't know if I'd run into
the same issue.

Searching the mailing list archives, the Wiki and also the Linksys
forums it hasn't been possible to get a firm answer - I'm hoping
someone on the mailing list has already done this and can confirm what
they have got working.

What I've found so far:

- The 'Official' Linksys response seems to be 250GB is the maximum
- I've found posts from users who appear to have been able to use
500GB disks, but they noted they needed to increase the size of the
swap partition (1MB for each GB of disk appeared to be recommended -
but would this be an issue for a second disk without the OS?)

There doesn't appear to be anyone using disks of 750GB or 1TB in size
though - anyone had any success with anything this big?

Cheers,

Ben

 

[Marc Boris]

Ben,

I have been using Unslung 6.8 for a year+ and now for many months 6.10
running with a 7-port Belkin USB 2 hub and one 300 GB, one 200GB and
two 750 GB (Maxtor OneTouch/Seagate FreeAgent) and whatever 160GB and
60GB external cases I have lying around. All filesystems are ext2/3
and I did not do anything special in terms of swap space increase.

So 750GB seems to work fine.

Marc

--- In nslu2-general@..., "formesyn" <ben@...> wrote:
...
> There doesn't appear to be anyone using disks of 750GB or 1TB in size
> though - anyone had any success with anything this big?...

[Jim-181]

I've been using a Simpletech 1TB Duo Pro drive for over 6 months with
no problems related to the NSLU2. I've had problems with 2 Simpletech
drives, otherwise everything works nicely. I'm running the drive in
RAID 0 mode and having slug autobackup to another (non-raid) drive at
night.

[Ian White-7]

I have been using essentially Unslung 6.8 (actually using virtually identical self-built "Unslung 6.7 alpha")
with a 750GB drive quite happily for over 18 months now

Yes I did increase the swap space to 1GB to allow for this larger drive

The slug has been set to reboot once per week

And apart from a power supply failure I have had no problems at all

Cheers
Ian W.

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: formesyn
  To: nslu2-general@...
  Sent: Friday, August 01, 2008 11:42 AM
  Subject: [nslu2-general] Biggest disk supported - 1TB, 750GB, 500GB or just 250GB ?


  I've got a NSLU2 with Unslung 6.8 and it has been working well for
  over a year, attached to a 250GB disk on USB2.

  However, I need to add some more storage - and have been looking into
  a getting a second HDD to attach and natively format. Alternatively, I
  could replace the single disk+ enclosure it currently has and upgrade
  that ( as per Bryan's recent posts ..) but don't know if I'd run into
  the same issue.

  Searching the mailing list archives, the Wiki and also the Linksys
  forums it hasn't been possible to get a firm answer - I'm hoping
  someone on the mailing list has already done this and can confirm what
  they have got working.

  What I've found so far:

  - The 'Official' Linksys response seems to be 250GB is the maximum
  - I've found posts from users who appear to have been able to use
  500GB disks, but they noted they needed to increase the size of the
  swap partition (1MB for each GB of disk appeared to be recommended -
  but would this be an issue for a second disk without the OS?)

  There doesn't appear to be anyone using disks of 750GB or 1TB in size
  though - anyone had any success with anything this big?

  Cheers,

  Ben



   

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[formesyn]

Thanks for the replies - Good to hear I still can get a good few year's more
worth of use out of my Slug.

I'm currently leaning towards picking up an Asaka USB (+eSATA) enclosure to
use with a 750GB WD Greenpower disk - I'll search back for tips on
upgrading.

        Ben

[jl.050877]

On Fri, Aug 01, 2008 at 10:42:13AM -0000, formesyn wrote:
> There doesn't appear to be anyone using disks of 750GB or 1TB in size
> though - anyone had any success with anything this big?

     In my experience, it depends on what you want to use the disks
for.  As a file server, it might work.  To backup other PCs on the
network, it might not.

     Most backup programs have a step where the directory of
yesterday's files is copied (hard linked) to a directory for
today's files and then the updates (differences) are collected via
rsync.  In my experience, the hard-linking step (cp -l) becomes
prohibitively slow, e.g. may take a good part of a day, on large
disks.

     Also, if you value your files, you probably want to run e2fsck
regularly.  In my experience, this also becomes extremely slow on
large hard disks.  For example, an e2fsck of a 500 GB hard disk,
which might take a mere 20 to 30 minutes on a desktop, takes maybe
five hours of thrashing on a slug.

John