Re: [ARMini-support] ARMiniX and Maxtor M3 2 or 4TB USB HD]
- From: A Rawnsley <rcomp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <armini-support@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2017 13:25:39 GMT
In message <71db1499-f877-8da4-6e6b-a73da788237e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Robert Hunter <robert.hunter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 11/02/2017 11:46, Learning Partners wrote:
Robert Hunter <robert.hunter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thanks for this.
Since my original post, a friend contacted me privately and said he had
tried the Samsung version of the Maxtor M3 4TB disc with his ARMiniX and
unfortunately it would not read it asking if it had been formatted. The
drive is as it arrived from Amazon. It arrived formatted and had been
connected to a Windows PC and used as a backup drive.
It would be useful to know what criteria apply to drives if they are for
use with modern RISC OS machines.
Buy from CJE or R-Comp? Pay a little more but have peace of mind and
support. And keep the RISC OS industry running.
I am very happy to do that but I need a drive that can be read by a
Windows PC as well as RISC OS.
As others have said, FAT32 is the key format for RISC OS / Windows
compatibility, or you use a NAS (eg. 1-disc NAS).
Whilst I would always prefer to be the supplier when being "source of
expertise", here's the pertinent information:
RISC OS "filecore" partitions limited to 256GB.
Above that you'll need to use FAT32 or a NAS.
I have tested FAT32 at 1Tb successfully. I'd imagine it would
be fine up to about 2TB.
FAT32 formatting tool supplied with ARMini/ARMiniX/ARMX6 in
Utilities.Caution
On *any* system, drives about 2TB may introduce problems. For
example, 32bit versions of Windows won't boot off drives larger
than 2TB. This is because you run out of 32bit addresses after
2TB.
With that in mind, I'd be cautious of > 2TB drives - I doubt
FAT32 would scale well beyond 32bit sectors. I tried 8TB drives
on RISC OS (for a bit of fun) and whilst I could format 256GB of
them for filecore, trying to format 8TB FAT32 was not
successful. Surprise surprise!
NAS devices allow RISC OS to access larger capacities - 20+TB
tested.
Note that large drives tend to encourage large files - neither
RISC OS nor FAT32 can handle more than 4Gb per file.
Be careful of bus-powered drives as they can pull quite heavy
load. USB3 bus powered drives tend to fall into this category.
If using bus-powered drives, look for ones that use two cables -
power and data - for max reliability.
I'd also add wrt Robert's Windows/RISC OS comment, that we supply Windows
kit internationally and are also several PC dealers' "preferred PC
builder". As such, I'd like to hope that we know a thing or two about
Windows kit as well as RISC OS, making us ideally placed to assist with
the interplay between the two.
ADDITIONAL PRODUCT AVAILABILITY NOTE...
Perhaps this should have been a separate announcement, but we now have an
interesting solution in stock - a USB-connected RAID device. Amazingly,
due to the peculiarities of pricing, we can supply these more-or-less free
when people purchase the two drives contained within!
Normally you would associate RAID (mirroring, although striping is
possible, albeit pointless!) with network storage devices, but many folks
are a bit put off by NAS devices, finding networking intimidating.
These USB enclosures (from a well know brand) can take two hard drives,
and handle RAID in hardware internally. This means that they present to
the OS as a single USB drive, but internally you have the benefits of two
drives (ie. protection against disc failure).
I have successfully tested this with a RISC OS filecore partition (see
above), although at the time I had 8TB drives in. John's new ARMX6
partitioning software would work quite nicely with this, I reckon! I'd
recommend probably a pair of 1TB drives. Alternatively you could use
FAT32 for compatibility with both OSs.
Food for thought, anyway. The convenience of USB storage with the fail
safe of a NAS, for little more than the cost of two drives.
Andrew
--
R-Comp
22 Robert Moffat, High Legh, Knutsford, Cheshire WA16 6PS
Tel: 01925 755043 Fax: 01925 757377
http://www.rcomp.co.uk
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