[Resolved] Connect an External USB hard drive to unRAID?

[LimeFalcon]

Hello,

 

I have a external hard drive that is both USB and T100, obviously USB is going to be a much faster connection.

 

How can I access an external USB hard drive from unRAID?

do i have to mount it somehow? (new to linux, know basics)

do i need drivers for the External connection?

 

any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

[lionelhutz]

unMENU gives you a fairly simple way to mount and share a hard drive such as that. It's also fairly easy to install. Check it out;

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5568.0

 

On another note, what exactly is a T100 external hard drive connection?

 

Peter

 

[LimeFalcon]

NAS, but sadly only T100 instead of T1000, hence slow

thank you for your input and i will try this when i get home

 

another thing that i found that might help others but not me since my drive is not formated NTFS

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Mounting_an_external_USB_drive_having_an_existing_NTFS_file_system_in_READ/WRITE_mode_to_transport_files_from/to_unRaid_server

[LimeFalcon]

I am at work so i can't test this but the link you sent me was just for unMenu, is it obvious how to mount a usb drive using unmenu or should i look for a walkthrough with unmenu?

 

maybe this will do the trick

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4384.0 ill try this

[lionelhutz]

It's fairly obvious. There is a page that lists the devices, including the extra ones outside the array. You click a button to mount the drive and then another button appears that you can click to share it on the network.

 

If it's not NTFS then what is is?

 

Peter

[LimeFalcon]

*sigh* I attached it to the unraid server and was presented with the image below,

I clicked on "Create reiserfs on /dev/sda1"

page loaded for about a minuet and then showed the same screen and did nothing, so i decided to connect it to another computer with usb then use 1000T connection to send the data but the drive no longer showed as formated, it was unformated, what did that button do? and why is all my data gone now?  Can i get my data back?

 

Truthfully I don't remember what format the drive was, i think it was ext3 or something, its  no name brand NAS enclosure with 100T eithernet and usb, if you power it on with it pluged into usb it turns on as a usb drive if it powers on with eithernet pulged it it powers up as NAS.  its a nice little enclosure for the money and i tossed a 500gb segate into it but the problem is that now i can see any of my data on it

 

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated, I really would like to know what i did when i hit that button

[Joe L.]

You re-formatted the disk with a reiser file system.

 

Your ability to get your data back will depend on the tools you have available to recover files from a formatted drive.

 

Joe L.

[LimeFalcon]

so there was no way i could have connected the usb drive to unraid and gotten the data off of it?

[Joe L.]

so there was no way i could have connected the usb drive to unraid and gotten the data off of it?

I did not say that. 

It all depends on if it recognizes the file system type on the drive and has a driver for that file system type.

Some drivers are not loaded by default, and you would have had to load them.

[lionelhutz]

Crap, I didn't know it came up and let you do that and I just never use drives outside my array. The button to use would have said to mount the drive, not create a reiserfs (Reiser File System). You will have to repair the filesystem if you want it back. There are PC tools to do that but I'm really not familiar with them.

 

Peter

[Rustbucket]

Yep, you hosed the partition table on the drive. You're right, the menu should warn you, a bunch, before letting you do that.

 

I don't know how that specific format command runs, but generally those operations just rewrite the partition table, not the data itself. If you knew what the old partition table was, you could write it back and all your data would still be there.

 

It's a pretty safe bet that the drive was formatted as FAT32 before this disaster happened, since it showed up on Windows computers when you plugged it in via USB.

 

If you're committed to trying to recover your data (it can take a long time), here's how I'd attack it:

 

I'm a Linux nerd, so I'd go get a live Linux distribution oriented toward this sort of thing like http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/

 

I'd recommend starting with creating an image of the drive as it sits now, so you can poke around with risking doing further damage. dd, or better yet ddrescue will do this from the command line. This operation will take a long time. It creates a block level copy of your drive, regardless of whether a given block was important or not (who knows at this point).

 

After you create your backup image (or before, if you're feeling brave), I'd try gpart. It scans you disk and looks for the patterns that match the boundaries of common partition types. Running it more that once will occasionally yield better (or at least different) results. Here's a little writeup that includes some info on gpart (and other ways of going at the problem): http://www.salingfamily.net/trav/linux/lost_partition.html

 

This is by no means guaranteed to work, or even necessarily the best way to go, but it's how I'd do it...

[jupilerman]

so there was no way i could have connected the usb drive to unraid and gotten the data off of it?

I did not say that. 

It all depends on if it recognizes the file system type on the drive and has a driver for that file system type.

Some drivers are not loaded by default, and you would have had to load them.

I just tested the usb drive and I had the same issue : file system not recognize and only the "create reiserfs" button.

The drive is an old one from the unraid, so it has reiserfs and files on it.

I mounted it manualy and i can read and write to it.

Still, unmenu wants to create a fs on it.

I did test with some other drives : same result.

Could this be a bug from unmenu ? Or is it just the USB device that is unrecognize by unRAID ?

[LimeFalcon]

Yea i ended up just quick formating ntfs (yes it ended up being fat32) and using a file retrevail software package to get the files back.

 

Not a huge deal just more time spent trying to get unRAID to do exactly what I want.

 

but now I know only some partitions can be mounted and fat32 is not one of them, c'est la vie.

 

but what you are saying is if it was NTFS originaly it would have been able to mount the drive and transfer within unRAID and that is good to know.

 

Thank you all for your posts, sorry for being such a Linux nub and not knowing what reiserfs was, actually could somebody explain what file system that is? i have never heard of it, (Reiser File System) sounds fun ok well any info would be great, the more I know the less questions i ask

[Rajahal]

You can read about ReiserFS here:

 

Wikipedia link

 

As I understand it, the reason LimeTech chose it for unRAID is because it has its own built in data recovery functions (journaling).

 

Edit: And here's the really fun read: Hans Resier

[neilt0]

Also, it's named after this guy:

 

 

Not this guy:

 

[jupilerman]

but now I know only some partitions can be mounted and fat32 is not one of them, c'est la vie.

fat32 CAN be mounted.

As you can see in the picture from my previous post, i have a partition mounted as vfat. It is a fat32 partition.

That drive is connected by IDE to the MB

But the partition from the USB drive is not recognize.  And it is a reiserfs.

 

I do believe that this non recognize partition is USB and/or umenu related.

Even after using the umenu button for creating a reiserfs on the drive, the partition is still not recognize.

[Rajahal]

but now I know only some partitions can be mounted and fat32 is not one of them, c'est la vie.

fat32 CAN be mounted.

As you can see in the picture from my previous post, i have a partition mounted as vfat. It is a fat32 partition.

 

The unRAID flash drive is fat32 as well.