Transfer files from USB drive to NAS drives in 9.3?

[Tauq]

Hello,

As the topic says I would like to transfer files from my External HDD to my internal ZFS NAS drives.
It takes very long time to transfer them over my LAN so I would like to find a way to plug the External HDD directly into the NAS.

Is there anyway to accomplish this in FreeNAS 9.3?
And I'm very new to FreeNAS so as much step by step instruction would be highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

 

[anodos]

It might actually be faster to transfer through the network than through USB connected to FreeNAS. USB3 isn't enabled by default in FreeNAS. If you have a spare sata connector on your motherboard and enough room in your chassis, you can probably remove the external drive from its enclosure, stick it in the FreeNAS server's chassis, and import the disk. This may not be possible however. I have seen some external hard drives recently that lack SATA connectors (USB only - mindnumbing stupidity).

 

[Tauq]

Somehow doubt it with this speed I'm on. It's transfering between 4-6mb/s over the LAN.
I'm awaiting a new modem/router from the ISP but it haven't arrived yet.
As for removing it from it's enclousure I don't think so. I might have to take a look though as 4-6mb/s and to transfer about 950gb of files.
It's going to take ages..

 

[anodos]

Somehow doubt it with this speed I'm on. It's transfering between 4-6mb/s over the LAN.
I'm awaiting a new modem/router from the ISP but it haven't arrived yet.
As for removing it from it's enclousure I don't think so. I might have to take a look though as 4-6mb/s and to transfer about 950gb of files.
It's going to take ages..

You can import the FAT or NTFS USB drive as outlined in the FreeNAS documentation I linked above.

Are those megabytes or megabits per second? Are you doing this over wireless or wired connection? That seems slow.

 

[Tauq]

From that pc is wireless, but the router isn't what it used to be.. Grown old, hence the change up.

Thanks, I missed that link. I will try that asap.
Thanks for the help.

 

[Tauq]

Also, while at it, you said that USB3 isn't activated by default in FreeNAS. Is there anyway I can activate it?

 

[anodos]

From that pc is wireless, but the router isn't what it used to be.. Grown old, hence the change up.

Thanks, I missed that link. I will try that asap.
Thanks for the help.

Wireless is most likely the source of your performance problems. Wifi is a decent solution for small amounts of traffic (streaming movies, browsing the internet, etc). If you are generating serious traffic (like transferring 1TB of data), you should use a wired connection.

If you want to try to get USB3 working on your system, look at the instructions here: http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_intro.html?highlight=usb3#compact-or-usb-flash. I wouldn't hold my breath because you have a haswell CPU.

 

[cyberjock]

Your best bet is to hook up the machine with a wire and copy the data that way.

Wifi sucks if performance matters.

USB3 is very flaky, at best, on FreeBSD/FreeNAS.

If my data was important to me, I'd do a copy over a machine that was wired to your network.

Just my 2 cents.