NAS326 USB CAddy requirements

duggleb
duggleb Posts: 19
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I'm using a NAS326 with a USB Caddy as external storage, it appears in storage manager and maps OK

I've tried to add a new caddy & HDD but it does not appear in Storage manager. I've checked on a PC and Windows sees the drive, shows data on the disk so what am I missing when connecting to the NAS.

I've tried the rear USB and the front USB, neither shows the disk, BUT if I plug a USB memory stick into either port they appear in Storage manager as expected

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  • duggleb
    duggleb Posts: 19
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    Followup

    HAve got the new drive to be recognised, but then later it has dropped out again. If I power off the drive, power it back on, then unplug and reconnect the USB the drive reappears for a while, but then drops out again

  • Mijzelf
    Mijzelf Posts: 2,468
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    That could be a disk sleep problem. The NAS326 uses a daemon 'hd-idle' to spin down disks which have been idle for a (configurable) while. I think you have got an USB-Sata converter which doesn't like that, and switches the bridge off, or something like that.

    A work around could be to remove the disk node from the /dev/ directory, after the filesystem is mounted. hd-idle then cannot spin-down the disk.

    To test that, enable the ssh server, login over ssh, and execute

    ls /dev/sd?
    

    It should show your internal disk(s). Then plugin the usb enclosure, and repeat. Now you should see one more. When the filesystem is mounted, remove the node:

    su
    rm /dev/sdc
    

    assuming /dev/sdc is your external disk. If the disk doesn't disappear now, hd-idle in combination with the usb-sata chip is the problem. Don't know if the disk keeps spinning, there could be an internal spindown mechanism.

  • duggleb
    duggleb Posts: 19
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    Thanks but when I run ls /dev/sd? I get

    /dev/sda /dev/sdd /dev/sdi /dev/sdl /dev/sdo /dev/sdr /dev/sdu /dev/sdx
    /dev/sdb /dev/sdg /dev/sdj /dev/sdm /dev/sdp /dev/sds /dev/sdv /dev/sdy
    /dev/sdc /dev/sdh /dev/sdk /dev/sdn /dev/sdq /dev/sdt /dev/sdw /dev/sdz

    I have 2 internal disks, 2 USB connected disks so where do the other 20 come from?

  • Mijzelf
    Mijzelf Posts: 2,468
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    Ah right. In that case the '326 doesn't create device nodes when needed, but has everything pre-populated.

    You'll have to find another way to find out which device node to use. On method is looking at the mounts:

    cat /proc/mounts
    

    shows all mounted filesystems as '<device node> <mountpoint> <filesystem> <flags>'

    On a ZyXEL NAS the internal data partitions are mounted on /i-data/* mountpoints, and the external on /e-data/*. There are more mountpoints, but you can ignore them. Probably the device node is not from a disk, but from a partition. /dev/sda is a disk, /dev/sda1 is the first partition on that disk. hd-idle uses the disk node, not the partition node. As the device node is not dynamically generated, it's better to rename it, not delete:

    su
    mv /dev/sdc /dev/sdc_gone
    

    So you can easily revert when needed. (The whole /dev/ directory is created on boot, so a reboot will always revert it). As far as I know the disk node is only used for partitioning, and by hd-idle. But I might be mistaken.

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