I have a Gigabyte Mobo in my PC and I want to format the disks without creating Gigabyte partition.  Can I format a new drive (precleared) in my server with a NTFS partition and windows format?  I am running 4.7.

 

Why would I want to do that?  I have so much time invested in creating 7TB of media I don't want to risk even the remotest possibility of losing the data.  If it is on an NTFS disk it would give me portability if the server crashes.

 

tunetyme

You can mount the default FS in Windows and OS X with little effort, there are drivers out there. 

 

I would think it highly unlikely that Tom will support NTFS as a member of the protected array.

 

Example: http://yareg.akucom.de/

I am not interested in having it as a part of the array but as a backup copy of my data.  I don't want to copy it over the network if I can avoid it.  I don't want to create a problem with the disks by formatting them on on PC with a Gigabyte mobo.

basically... no.  not if you intend to use the ntfs formatted drive in an unRAID protected array.

 

You can mount and access it as an additional disk , not protected by parity.  You can use one of the add-ons (SNAP, or unMENU possibly) or just enter the commands by hand as shown in the wiki:

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

 

If all you need is read-only access, it is easier:

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Copy_files_from_a_NTFS_drive

 

Data disks in an unRAID array are re-formatted as "reiserfs" so it cannot be part of the protected array.

 

If all you want to do is use the disk as an un-protected disk, then with add-ons you can use an NTFS disk, but then it is un-protected, and your precious data is at risk.

 

One last thing... unRAID is not a true backup of your data.  All it would take is one fire/flood/tornado/lightning strike to destroy your server.    A true backup would be a second copy of your data, off-site.  (and regularly kept up to date)

 

Joe L.

Do you have a Gigabyte board that is known to automatically create an HPA partition with no option to disable it, or where HPA reenables itself unpredictably? If not, then there is no point to have any paranoia over it. Just disable the HPA option and move on.

 

Gigabyte boards of the last several years all default to having HPA off.

I have an older board and HPA is always on and when I spoke to Gigabyte they did not have a way to turn it off.  I was not able to remove HPS on one of my drives that I wanted to reformat for the array.  We tried everything we could to remove it with my limited resources.

 

My intent is not to have this as part of the array but a true hard copy back up.  I have 3 drives that are almost full and I plan to finish filling them up and then make a NTFS copy.  I will keep these off site.  If I lose my server I will at least be able to play my media on a Windows system or have the back up to copy to new disks if I have multiple disk failure. As my fourth drive fills up I will make regular copies.