A few n00b questions...be gentle

[cygnusaa]

Hi all,

 

Fresh new build, all new stuff...

 

A few questions:

 

1) I see that the flash drive is to be formated in FAT/FAT32. NTFS is a no go correct?  Currently, my SanDisk Cruzer is NTFS but reformatting it to FAT/FAT32 should be a snap right? Its empty currently, and U3 crud is gone.

 

2) Do the hard drives I use for the array have to be formatted in FAT/FAT32 or NTFS or nothing? Meaning, does the unRaid software format them in whatever it needs, sort of like a NAS appliance might use ext2 or ext3?

 

3) Once I have the array up and running and I have it configured as my media NAS...if I transfer the music, movies and photos that I currently have on a 250GB drive formatted in NTFS, is this a problem?  In short, if the array is to be formatted in FAT/FAT32 or whatever, will I be able to move files onto it from a drive that is NTFS?  The drive in question is not going into the array at all and will be repurposed.  I vaguely recall that files on an NTFS drive cant be sent to or used on a FAT/FAT32 drive or something like that.

 

Thanks for your patience with n00b questions...I am new to array technology and "servers".

 

be gentle.

[erikatcuse]

1.  For the flash format it with fat...if you need to use the hp format tool

 

2.  Unraid will format the drives for you

 

3.  No not at all just transfer them over...unraid has samba on it to negotiate between the two os's

[BillK]

+1 for erikatcuse's responses.

 

FYI...on #2...the data drives will be reformatted using the ReiserFS file system.  ReiserFS was selected due to it's fast journaling, flexibility, efficient space allocation & very, very good performance with small files.  If I'm not mistaken, the parity drive is not formatted, but used "raw".

[Joe L.]

I vaguely recall that files on an NTFS drive cant be sent to or used on a FAT/FAT32 drive or something like that.

 

Thanks for your patience with n00b questions...I am new to array technology and "servers".

 

be gentle.

The max size file on a FAT file system is 2Gig, the max on a fat32 is 4Gig.  NTFS file systems (and almost all Linux file systems) can handle files much much bigger, in fact, as big as the entire filesystem.  The only limitation on copying files from NTFS to FAT or FAT32 is the original file must be small enough to fit in the limitation of the FAT or FAT32 file system.

 

So you can easily copy a 1 Gig file from NTFS to FAT or FAT32.  Same with a 2 Gig file.

 

You cannot copy a 3 Gig file from NTFS to a FAT filesysstem.  It is too big.  You can copy it to a FAT32 filesystem.

 

You cannot copy a 6 Gig file from NTFS to FAT or FAT32... Again, it is too big... regardless of how much free space is on the FAT or FAT32 filesystem.

[cygnusaa]

thanks guys...pretty much answers everything.