What exactly are the requirements of an external HDD connected to a Genius?

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › What exactly are the requirements of an external HDD connected to a Genius?

Frittmann

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#96760 3-Feb-2012 17:49

I've read a lot in the last three days, since first hooking up my Orcon Genius Lite, about the requirements and limitations on external storage devices being connected via USB to the Genius. I am now completely confused and would like some clarification please.

Initially I had read somewhere that the partition limit is 100GB and it must be formatted with FAT32. I have an external 500GB drive which I cleared all the data off to DVDs so that I could repartition it accordingly. However, FAT32 does not support everything I want to do with a NAS system, which is essentially what I am making out of my file server on the Genius and the 500GB drive. One of the most important functions, to me, is creating a CVS repository on the NAS, and for this I really need a more robust file system, such as ext4 with journaling.

I'd like to get the partitioning and formatting right before I get in too deep with the Genius. I've only had it for three days now, so I haven't had time yet to upload my in-home intranet site, my CVS repository, my FTP server files, etc to it. Now is the time for me to lay a good foundation for my future digital assets. I may even invest in a larger external HDD if I can get some clarification on the abilities of this Genius box. Can anyone clarify for me what partition sizes and what file system formats are available with it?

gehenna

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#576972 3-Feb-2012 19:07

Don't bother with the file sharing on Genius, search for my posts on the same topic a while ago. It's totally not worth the effort.

Frittmann

65 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#577014 3-Feb-2012 20:50

Thanks gehenna, it was actually your thread Orcon Genius as a File Server which confused me so much in the first place. :-)

I am not concerned so much about transfer speeds from the file server, as I am not intending to stream videos from it. The main functionality I want is for version control and document management, using CVS or SVN. I plan to use the check-out and check-in features of a proper repository to help me keep track of my documents. I had to empty out my 500GB external drive recently which contains multiple copies of the same documents, some of which are exact copies and some are different versions. I was just shoveling them all onto the external hard drive. To be better organized, I want to set up a repository, served up locally, to do this.

Again, I could install a separate machine to do this, just like a machine to run a database and an Apache web server for my home intranet site as mentioned in another thread here, but I'd like to use the Genius box if I can instead, as it is supposed to provide this functionality anyway.

So, yeah, what exactly is the story with the file systems and partition sizes of the Genius? Can we get a definitive statement from Orcon about this?

I see that both yourself and hbngan posted in the other thread that you can access the full size of your external hard drives from your Genius, and that you both were using NTFS. Do you happen to know if other formats will work, such as ext4?