New External Hard Drive - Home Sharing - FAT32/exFAT/NTFS?

Hello forum,

I'm having a little trouble with a new Seagate 2GB external hard drive. I had hoped to set it up so that I could dump all my "data" on there & be able to access it (read/write) throughout the house.

I have a laptop running Windows 8 and an iMac running Mac OS 10.6.

My first preference was to use my broadband router's USB port to connect the drive to. It's an Orange Bright Box router, and it will do this sort of thing, but the online guidance told me it needed to be formatted with FAT32 or NTFS.

FAT32 also works fine with my iMac and my laptop, but has (I gather) a 4GB file size limit, which I can't live with.

NTFS works fine with my laptop but my iMac is read-only with NTFS (I gather it's possible to get NTFS write access with a Mac but it can be problematic).

exFAT works with both computers fine (read/write) but when I format the drive with exFAT and connect to the router, the router won't see it.

I suppose I could format the drive as a Mac drive (HFS+?), but again I don't think that helps because the router's documentation suggests that it wouldn't be able to see it (although I have no way of being sure of this without trying).

I don't want to keep the drive plugged into the laptop - clutter. At the moment it's formatting with exFAT and plugged into my iMac, and everything works, but very slowly - file transfer from Mac to laptop (2 stage process via the router, wirelessly) is very slow - not quite enough to be able to watch video without interruptions. And I can't connect the drive to my router because of the above.

Am I stuck? Or is there some clever way that I'm not aware of of getting everything working together?

Thanks!
Alan.

I wonder if the router would recognise a Linux file system like ext3 or ext4 on its usb port ?

Thanks - hadn't thought of that.

I suppose I could use a utility like GParted to set it up like that. I'm reluctant to try though because I can't find any info online - google search doesn't really show anything up. Ditto HFS+. I wondered if the router was a rebadged thing & that if I know what it was on the inside (Netgear or whatever) I might be able to find out more. Could contact Orange helpdesk I suppose, but I suspect I'd just waste a load of money on my phone bill & not get anywhere!

Of course it is a rebadged thing but nothing so simple as Netgear.

In reference to forums.thinkbroadband.com/freeserve/t/4093802-re-spy-in-the-router-...:

Arcadyan Technology Corporation, Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan.

but their website has gone; so they probably have too.

Thanks. Have just emailed Orange for their advice (but I bet I don't get any!).

If the drive is connected to the router (USB) then it isn't connected directly to a computer so the only thing that needs to understand the filesystem is the router.

As far as the computers are concerned they are connecting to a network share, probably SMB/CIFS (Samba) or maybe NFS, WebDav or FTP.

A problem would be if the router doesn't present a (platform agnostic) share and requires you to install some kind of driver or software on each client computer. But assuming this complication does not arise:-

So if the router only supports attaching a drive in FAT32 and NTFS (at least in the Web UI) choose NTFS. As has been mentioned the underlying router OS probably supports ext4 and several others but you may need to go under the bonnet and set that up in the config files.

The nnly impact of the filesystem choice will be things like file size limit (which for you rules out FAT32) and the range file permissions / ACLs

Bear in mind that the USB connection limits the transfer rates to something less than 50MB/s and if the router does not have any gigabilt ports that drops to less than 12MB/s so don't expect stellar performance with this setup especially with large files.

Edit:
Another option, (though needing a spare PC) would be to install something FreeNAS or NAS4Free as you can add storage using relatively cheap internal drives. For external drives eSATA is a faster connector (you can put a standard SATA drive in a eSATA caddy if needed).

Edited by prlzx (Sat 09-Feb-13 14:23:19)

You mean a 2TB external HD?

In reply to a post by bigalxyz123:

my iMac is read-only with NTFS (I gather it's possible to get NTFS write access with a Mac but it can be problematic).

Does that matter? The Mac won't actually be accessing the drive; the BrightBox will. The Brightbox enables read/write access to its drive.

Here's a test. Can the Mac write to the NTFS drive on the laptop over the network? If so, then it's the same situation.

Many thanks - would be perfectly happy with NTFS except for Mac's inability to write to NTFS. Or are you saying that if I connected the drive to the router, the Mac would be ok (because the router's ok)? Forgive my ignorance - I'm reaching the limits of my knowledge on this stuff (which is quite limited!).

Alan.

The way in which the drive is formatted will be hidden from the clients. They will just see it as some kind of "network" drive. Format the drive as NTFS and give it a go.

Yes it is the router is reading / writing NTFS, not the computers.

If the router is sharing the drive using SMB (sometimes called Windows file sharing even though it not specific) the following applies:-

On your Mac, the router will show up as a networked computer / server icon (often a Windows bluescreen style icon).

The share will appear as a folder inside that. Depending on how the router handles it it will present either the whole drive or a folder (and everything under it).

Same with Windows and Linux

You can help things by making sure the router, Mac and Windows all have the same WorkGroup setting (Window 8 confuses things by instead pushing the HomeGroup concept to the fore and hiding some of the (Home/Private or Public) what-kind-of-network choices).

On Mac and Linux the "filesystem" of the shared drive will show as SMBFS or equivalent regardless of how the drive is formatted.

If the underlying service on the router is Samba, it would allow you to setup multiple shared folders with different group/user permissions but the router's WebUI might only offer simplified options.

Personally the way I might use a router with USB drive sharing would be to plug in a USB stick (16/32GB or so) and use it for secure remote access storage (if the router can also run a VPN service).

I think 12MB/s will be too frustrating for a 2TB drive (2 days continuous to fill it so once you have tested it works you should probably pre-populate it while attached to a computer!)

Edited by prlzx (Sat 09-Feb-13 15:31:01)

we think that the client computers will be writing to a file service provided by the router using the usb disk. So only the router needs to handle the usb filesystem explicitly and it then offers a shared drive to other users via the SMB protocol.

You can I believe share a folder on a Mac with a PC and a PC can't read a Mac file system, which illustrates the point.

In other words the Mac will read/write to a SMB drive/service, not to NTFS.

I have just been through a similar exercise for similar reasons; and it is working well.

The main differences are-

My External HDD is 500 GB - sufficient for my purposes at present, formatted NTFS

I have attached a 4-way USB Adaptor first in the Bright Box USB Socket, so that I can also attach various USB Sticks as and when

I have not got the possible complication of an iMac

---------------------------------------


Last night, I started a description using my netbook using Open Office and the cut-down version of WORD 2010, saving to that external HDD in both DOC and ODF formats, as part of the testing-

then finishing today on my tower PC, using WORD 2007, still saving in both formats for other reasons, to the external HDD; and also in PDF.


Earlier I had copied all of my Family History files, about 1.5 GB to the external HDD as a temporary backup - it is my intention to set up a regular Backup shortly. (I have also copied those FH files to the netbook and to a laptop on a "belt and braces" basis.)

At present, it is all on an experimental basis, as I was "feeling my way" and there are some details which I suspect need improving.


A few months back, I had organised my three PCs in to a LAN, with areas on each of their HDDs accessible from either of the other two.

Thanks all. Have emptied the drive and formatted as NTFS.

Direct connection to Windows laptop is fine.

If connected to router, Windows laptop can read/write ok.

Mac not working though. Finds the router as part of the network, and the hard drive shows us as a folder called "Big Whopper" (which is the name I gave to the drive when I formatted it) within that item (don't think I've got the terminology right but hopefully you know what I mean) - at top of Finder window it says "Connected as: Guest"

Am unable to browse the drive though - when I double click on the item I see an error message saying: "The operation can't be completed because the original item for "Big Whopper" can't be found.

Am hunting around online to see if I can find out what all this means...(but if anyone happens to read this & is able to help, I'd be v grateful)

Before I connected the HD to the router, the instructions from Orange were to go to the router settings (web browser access - the usual sort of thing) and set up a user name and password for access. The first time I connected with Windows, I was asked to supply a user name & password, but when I try now with the Mac, it's not asking me for anything at all.

http://www.7tutorials.com/access-windows-7-shared-fo... might help - you have to set up the workgroup and perhaps have a compatible username/password on each system

Try on BroghtBox/USB Adding User for yiur Mac user + pwd.

Are all the Workgroup Names the same?

I'm not sure if OS X likes spaces in volume names. Best to avoid spaces and 'special' characters in shared/networked volume, directory and file names imo. Just stick to letters, digits and underscores.

I wonder if you share the drive via Windows SMB... can Mac read/write to SMB shares?

Google may be your friend here... I am not a mac expert (I'm not even a mac novice).

Thanks everyone.

For the moment I've formatted as NTFS & connected to my router. Mac can read & write ok (as predicted by your good selves) so I'm now transferring some files from the Mac to the HD. It's very slow though (also as predicted by your good selves!) - average transfer rate is about 500kB/sec, so the 200GB I want to transfer will take maybe 400,000 seconds, which is 4 or 5 days

I couldn't initiate the transfer from the Mac (because of the problem I described earlier - can't access the drive) but I was able to initiate it from my Windows laptop.

I used to have a 10m ethernet cable...I might go up to the loft & see if it's still there. Might help...?

Will return to all the network/homegroup naming/etc. stuff in due course. It's all very complicated!

Might be of interest.

Transfer Speeds
These range between about 350 KBps and about 1 MBps

Specifically tested, copying my Family History Folder, 4 GB, 8,589 Files etc, from the Vista Tower to the XHDD.

8:08 Started

8:28 Copied 1 GB Total

9:03 Copied 3 GB Total

9:22 Copied 4 GB Total, Finished.

Just after the 8:08 Start, the declared rate was about 350 KBps, rising quickly to about 950 KBps.

Given the timings above, these work out at an overall average of 901 KBps.


SAVE Transfer Speeds during EDIT

The main WORD DOC File that this is part of, is 1,116 KB, inclusive of two Screen Captures.

Saving this to the XHDD during editing on the Tower PC, using CtlS, takes about 3 seconds, with usually a �Gas Gauge� appearing.

Saving it to the Tower�s HDD takes under 1 second, with minimal indication of the process.

Thanks. I've seen:

* Mac wireless to router to router USB port to HD - 600kB/s
* Mac ethernet to router to router USB port to HD - 1.5Mb/s
* Mac ethernet to router to laptop by ethernet to HD (connected to laptop) - 11Mb/s!

So it looks like the router's USB port is very much the bottleneck here (as a couple of people mentioned yesterday)

Transferring 200GB from the Mac is now going to take about 5 hours instead of 4 days!

I have now installed a graphics editing program on the XHDD - whilst it was connected to the Vista Tower - no problems apart from changing the HDD from the default C:\ to J:\

Moved the XHDD back on to the 4-way USB Adaptor, in turn connected to the Bright Box USB port.

All three PCs successfully accessed and ran the graphics program on that remote disk, including minor edits to some JPG files.

The program adjusted to the different screen sizes etc.

Interesting possibilities!

In reply to a post by bigalxyz123:

* Mac ethernet to router to laptop by ethernet to HD (connected to laptop) - 11Mb/s!

Yes this an expected transfer rate if either / both the Mac or Windows laptop have a 100M (aka fast ethernet) network card. If they both had gigabit ports you would expect rates up to 3 times faster (limited by USB 2).

The rate when on on the router USB port is an order of magnitude slower than I expected
which makes me wonder if the router is not getting the port into USB 2 mode - the rate is closer to USB 1.x.

Does the external drive have its own power supply or is it powered by the USB connector? (as the router is unlikely to have significant spare power to supply over USB).

Thanks - yes, external drive plugs into the mains, so it doesn't rely on the router for its power.