4 TB USB hard drive

Summary:

Please help!

4 TB USB hard drive

801 07 Feb 2013 12:03

Hi-

I had my WDMBWE blue rings for sometimes now. But recently i just bought 4TB Seagate external storage that i would like to mount it to my WDMBWE.
When i plug in, it doesn't recognise the hard drive at all. Anyone has similar experience?
Appreciate any helps or pointers.

Cheers-
801

Re: 4 TB USB hard drive

zxon 05 Apr 2013 00:48

I'd like some help on this too. I just got myself a Toshiba USB3 3TB drive but it doesn't seem to be recognised properly by my MyBook World Edition (blue rings). It was originally formatted in NTFS so I formatted it again as ext3, but still no luck. It doesn't show up under Drive Management on the Shared Storage Manager, nor does anything show up under /shares/external/

I even tried mounting it manually:

mount /dev/sdb /shares/external/

…only to get the following error:

mount: Mounting /dev/sdb on /shares/external/ failed: Invalid argument

The weird thing is, I think it has recognised it to a certain extent. My reasoning for this is contained in a newly created file on the MyBook "/var/run/block/sdb", which contains:

set -e
rmdir /shares/external/ToshibaExternal-USB-3.0
sed '/sdb/d' -i /etc/external-drives
set -e
rmdir /shares/external/ToshibaExternal-USB-3.0
sed '/sdb/d' -i /etc/external-drives
set -e
rmdir /shares/external/ToshibaExternal-USB-3.0
sed '/sdb/d' -i /etc/external-drives
cd /usr/mionet/ ; /usr/mionet/mionetd notify ; cd -
rm /var/run/block/sdb

Note the numerous references to "ToshibaExternal-USB-3.0".

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Re: 4 TB USB hard drive

anton_s 07 Apr 2013 11:27

I can confirm that large drives are not recognized by bluerings kernel. Check your dmesg when the drive is plugged.
I'm running MyLenny which has its kernel based on the stock one plus some extra features added by alllexx (e.g. EABI). We need kernel sources in order to try building it with support of large drives. Several people have been asking alllexx to share his kernel sources & instructions (see page 3 in "MyLenny" firmware thread, I can't post links). Let's hope he replies, otherwise we have to redo all his great work.

Re: 4 TB USB hard drive

zxon 07 Apr 2013 11:36

When you say "large" drives, how large are we talking? This 3TB drive I have is still new so I can restore it to normal and take it back to the shop for a couple of smaller ones instead.

Re: 4 TB USB hard drive

anton_s 07 Apr 2013 12:04

The main point is the sector size. Drives with 512-byte sectors are fine. Drives with 4096-byte sectors are not supported. So check your drive's specs.
BTW: a quote from seagate dot com/tech-insights/advanced-format-4k-sector-hard-drives-master-ti

Kernel support for Advanced Format drives is available in kernel versions 2.6.31 and above. Support for portioning and formatting Advanced Format drives is available in the following Linux utilities:
Fdisk: GNU Fdisk is a command line utility that partitions hard drives. Versions 1.2.3 and above support Advanced Format drives.
Parted: GNU Parted is a graphical utility for partitioning hard drives. Versions 2.1 and above support Advanced Format drives.

Current bluerings kernel is 2.6.17.

Re: 4 TB USB hard drive

zxon 07 Apr 2013 12:42

Confirmed: My 3TB drive uses 4096-byte sectors, and my bluerings kernel is 2.6.17.14.

It seems like such a small step up from 2.6.17 to 2.6.31, but that thread you've posted in is rather old so I'm not sure if we will ever get a response. Fingers crossed, though!

I went for a 3TB drive to futureproof myself a little bit, but I may have to just return it for a smaller one with 512 byte sectors.