Connect USB External Drive to FreeNAS

[Zythyr]

I just got my FreeNAS v9.1.1 up and running. I want to connect my external USB hard drive to my FreeNAS so I can view and transfer the content of the USB external hard drive to my FreeNAS (or vice versa). How do I do this?

My external hard drive is formatted in NTFS file format.

I used the, Import Volumes method, but it doesn't properly work. When I navigate to the /mnt directory, I see my drive mounted, but there is no content in there.

Another question I have is that am I able to write to NTFS disk (copy the conent of my freenas drive to my external)?

 

[survive]

Hi Zythyr,

Please read this:

http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Volumes#Importing_Volumes

I strongly advice you to treat the NTFS support in FreeNAS as read-only...don't use it to write data out to the drive. If you want to get data off the filer using a non-native format copy it over the network from a share!

-Will

 

[Zythyr]

Hi Zythyr,

Please read this:

http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Volumes#Importing_Volumes

I strongly advice you to treat the NTFS support in FreeNAS as read-only...don't use it to write data out to the drive. If you want to get data off the filer using a non-native format copy it over the network from a share!

-Will

@survive, I read the Import Volumes wiki link, and I already tried that. As I mentioned above, when I use Import Volume method, the disk is mounted, but when I actually navigate to the mount, for example: /mnt/usb1234, I don't see any content in there.

I also tried another method similar to below, but that also doesn't work. It gives me some error saying the disk is not NTFS...

Code:

mkdir /mnt/usb1234
kldload fuse
ntfs-3g /dev/da1 /mnt/usb1234

I tried using another USB drive as a test, and it worked fine. Maybe my external drive is messed up (however it works fine on Windows). I want to try using my second external drive, but want to make sure my method is correct, because I dont' want to corrupt my external drive and lose all the data.

As for the question about writing to NTFS, what do you mean by doing it over the network share? Do I create a CIFS share for my FreeNAS drive and connect my external to my Windows PC then copy paste? Or do I also connect the external to FreeNAS?

 

[warri]

As for the question about writing to NTFS, what do you mean by doing it over the network share? Do I create a CIFS share for my FreeNAS drive and connect my external to my Windows PC then copy paste? Or do I also connect the external to FreeNAS?

Yeah, connect the external HDD to your Windows PC and copy the files over via CIFS - don't connect the NTFS-formatted external HDD to FreeNAS to write stuff on it.

 

[Zythyr]

I connected my other external to my FreeNAS also, and I keep having the same problem when I go to "Import Volumes". When I go to "View Volumes", I see my exernal hard drive that I mounted, however, for the space used, size, status, it says "Error".

Using the Shell, when I navigate to my external drive that is mounted, no files are listed in there.

 

[delino]

I'm not an expert but i thing freenas/freebsd supports really only ZFS and UFS format disk files. Even if NTFS in an option according to the GUI, it's not working with large capacity disks: like in our case a 2Tb external USB disk. Even if we are able to mount it with NTFS-Import-Volume, only 823.5 KB out of 2TB is available...

I just realized that issue yesterday and i must say i am reconsidering the freenas because, having my 2T external disk on a share with CISF is not so convenient for my needs and i don't want to invest in a gigEthernet router to improve my LAN bandwidth and anyways, i prefer all my harddisk centralized on my NAS.

If someone has an recommendation for a compatible Windows/OSX/FREEBSD format file to use for external large capacity harddisk, it would be appreciated.

 

[vadim]

I was able to successfully connect ntfs formatted disk to freenas using following sequence:

Code:

mkdir /mnt/usb1234
kldload fuse
ntfs-3g /dev/da1s1 /mnt/usb1234

dev/da1 is whole usb drive while dev/da1s1 is it's first partition.

I believe it can be useful.

 

[bajaking]

Thank you vadmin.
That worked for me, too. Got my drive # by looking at Volumes->View Disks in the GUI, which showed my USB connected 4TB drive as #16. Then mounted as read-only, just in case. kldload fuse gave an error, though; apparently fuse was "already loaded or in kernel".

mkdir /mnt/external
ntfs-3g -o ro /dev/da16s1 /mnt/external

Took a few seconds longer than a call to mount usually does, but worked fine.

 

[navatala]

hi All,

just wondering if this the recommended best practice, ie to mount ntfs as read only, if so short of using a share to copy data from freenas over to an external HD (which is slow) is there any other way of doing this?

 

[SweetAndLow]

This thread started over 7 years ago. You should refer to the manual for how to import a disk.