Re: [BackupPC-users] notes on Seagate Free Agent drive

I second the comment on the reformat.

reasons
1)even though ntfs-fuse is probably the most optimized and fastest fuse plugin, it is still in fuse and still has everything processed on the CPU with no DMA at all because of that. For transfering files ntfs-fuse can be pretty fast but I/O basically sucks!
2)ntfs-fuse is not a very mature piece of sofware vs a filesystem like XFS or EXT3 or reiserfs.

basically, you will already have poor performance because of the USB interface(you did say FreeAgent 'PRO' so i'm assuming) and you will stack another slow point on top of it.

this may be OK for a number of people do few backups with low file counts but it should be used in the proper situation. dont try to do this on a larger backuppc deployment or you will have performance issues.

with fuse there is a compount penalty that is usually hidden with other filesystems. when you need to process something you can typically load it off disk with low CPU usage which allows you CPU to work on your job at full speed, but with fuse you have to use the CPU both for loading and for processing and likely also for writing back to the disk.

fuse is great, but should probably not be used for heavy disk access.

anyway, good luck.

On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Nils Breunese (Lemonbit) <nils AT lemonbit DOT nl> wrote:

Chris Baker wrote:

> A couple days ago, someone asked about Linux and Western Digital
> external
> hard drives. This is a response, sort of. I am posting my notes on
> how I got
> a Seagate Free Agent drive to work with Linux. I hope this will help
> with
> other drives. I make no guarantees.
>
>
> We purchased a Seagate FreeAgent USB drive. Unfortunately, Seagate
> only
> supports it with Windows and Macs. It worked find with Windows XP.
> On the
> Linux box, that was a different story.
>
> Research indicated that the drive was already formatted into NTFS. I
> knew
> this would not be an issue as people mount NTFS partitions all the
> time on
> Linux.
>
> I went to the site www.linux-ntfs.org. I found just about all I
> needed on
> that site. I found this page especially helpful:
> www.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php?id=ntfsmount. It had some good
> instructions:
>
> First of all you need to download FUSE from Sourcefourge. Then:
>
> tar zxvf fuse-2.7.0.tar.gz
> cd fuse-2.7.0
> ./configure
> Make
> make install
>
> Then you need to install ntfsprogs:
>
> tar zxvf ntfsprogs-2.0.0.tar.gz
> cd ntfsprogs-2.0.0
> ./configure --enable-fuse-module
> Make
> make install
>
> This installed the ntfsmount command, which I did not have before.
> But I
> wasn't quite finished.
>
> Apparently the issue with this drive has to do with power
> management. I ran
> the command hdparm -Z to "disable Seagate auto-powersaving mode."
> After
> that, I simply ran the command:
>
> ntfsmount /dev/sda1 /media/FreeAgent_Drive
>
> Then, I was ready to go. I could get to the hard drive through the
> GUI or
> the command line.

Why didn't you just reformat it with your favorite filesystem?

Nils Breunese.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge
Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes
Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world
http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url="">
_______________________________________________
BackupPC-users mailing list
BackupPC-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users
Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net
Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge
Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes
Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world
http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/

_______________________________________________
BackupPC-users mailing list
BackupPC-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
List:    https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users
Wiki:    http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net
Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/