Can I plug in an external USB drive with data?

[pcloadetter]

i have an external USB drive with loads of data on it. Is there a way I can plug it in as removable media so I can access the data from jails and copy data to it?
I don't want to add it to a pool because I'd like to be able to unplug it and connect to another system.

 

[DrKK]

i have an external USB drive with loads of data on it. Is there a way I can plug it in as removable media so I can access the data from jails and copy data to it?
I don't want to add it to a pool because I'd like to be able to unplug it and connect to another system.

Depends what filesystem the external drive has. NTFS would be good. (I believe you can use UFS, NTFS, ext3, and "MSDOS").

You can use the Storage->Import *DISK* functionality. What this does (if you have one of the supported filesystems), is it allows you to mount the external drive read only, copy all the files to your pool, and then dismounts the drive.

But, unless you personally reformatted the drive to NTFS, it may have come out of the box with a FAT32 filesystem, and that is not supported in the GUI import. I am told it can be done at the command-line, but it's not trivial.

 

[pcloadetter]

Thank you. The drive is NTFS luckily.

How would this set up handle a sudden disconnect, like a power outage? My FN system is on a UPS, but the drive would not be.

 

[DrKK]

Thank you. The drive is NTFS luckily.

How would this set up handle a sudden disconnect, like a power outage? My FN system is on a UPS, but the drive would not be.

Well, you would be doing a one-time import of the disk. So, there would only be a limited time that you would be expose yourself to the problem. I think you just bite the bullet and go for it. Or, you can plug the power supply for the external drive into the UPS also :)

 

[pcloadetter]

I may have been unclear. I want to permanently mount this external drive, but be able to remove it and take it with me as needed. Like an external drive on a Win/Mac/whatever.

I will be copying data to/from it on a regular basis

 

[danb35]

I want to permanently mount this external drive, but be able to remove it and take it with me as needed.

FreeNAS doesn't support this with an NTFS disk. You could do it (though it still wouldn't be recommended) if you reformatted it as ZFS, though.

 

[anodos]

I may have been unclear. I want to permanently mount this external drive, but be able to remove it and take it with me as needed. Like an external drive on a Win/Mac/whatever.

I will be copying data to/from it on a regular basis

Not possible. Personally, for USB backups I just connect the external drive to a windows computer and use robocopy to back up data.

 

[NAStyBox]

Are there any plans to add this functionality? How difficult would it be? It's not such a big deal in an enterprise environment, but at home it would be nice if you could just plug in a USB stick or drive, and read/write to it, like pretty much all pre-packaged NAS systems do. No, I don't want a pre-packaged NAS system, and no I'm not formatting my USB drives to ZFS.

 

[danb35]

I'm not aware of any plans to add this function. FreeNAS is ZFS-only. If you want to serve other filesystems, you should use a different OS.