ZyXEL Communications nsa325 Home Theater Server User Manual


 
Chapter 8 Storage
Media Server User’s Guide
169
8.5.1 External Disks
You may connect USB storage devices that support the following file systems to the NSA.
Windows File Systems: NTFS, FAT32 and FAT16.
Linux File Systems: ReiserFS, EXT2, EXT3, and XFS.
8.6 Storage Technical Reference
This section provides some background information about the topics covered in this chapter.
8.6.1 Volumes and RAID
A volume is a storage area on a disk or disks. You can create volumes on the internal disks and
external disks attached to the USB port(s). You can spread a volume across internal disks but not
between internal and external disks.
RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) or JBOD is the storage method that the NSA uses.
The storage method you use depends on how many disks you have and how many volumes you
want to create. It’s important that you consider this carefully as all data is deleted when you re-
create a volume.
Note: Back up your data before deleting or re-creating a volume!
Below is a table that summarizes some attributes of the various RAID levels as supported on the
NSA. For capacity and storage efficiency, “S” is the size of the smallest drive in the array, and “N” is
the number of drives in the array.
Storage efficiency assumes all drives are of identical size.
File System Select the file system you want the new volume to use.
Windows file systems
NTFS: Recommended.
FAT32: Newer, and more efficient than FAT16. Supports a volume size of up to 2 TB
(Tera Bytes) and individual file sizes of up to 4 GB.
FAT16: Compatible with older Windows operating systems. Supports volume and file
sizes of up to 2 GB.
Linux file systems
EXT2: Older file system.
EXT3: The same as EXT2, but adds a journaled file system and is more robust.
EXT4: Supports larger files and better performance than EXT3.
ReiserFS: Offers better performance for small files.
XFS: Allows expansion for mounted volumes.
Apply Click this to save your changes and create the volume.
Cancel Click this to exit this screen without saving changes.
Table 26 Storage > Create an External Volume (continued)
LABEL DESCRIPTION