WD USB3 disk is scanned on each boot...

[huotg01]

I have a new problem with my WD USB3 disk. The disk has 2 partitions:

• swap partition (Linux swap: 1Gb)
• data partition- NTFS

The system seems to scan the disk on all boots and on all connections, and this action delays the mounting of the disk (could take one hour).
As previously suggested in other threads, I did run a chkdsk on the disk (in fact on the ntfs partition), and there is absolutely no error reported:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>chkdsk /r q:
Le type du système de fichiers est NTFS.
Le nom de volume est My Book.

Étape*1*: Examen de la structure du système de fichiers de base...
  904530 enregistrements de fichier traités.
La vérification des fichiers est terminée.
  405 enregistrements de grand fichier traités.
  0 enregistrements de fichier incorrect traités.
Étape*2*: Examen de la liaison des noms de fichiers...
  1616306 entrées d'index traitées.
La vérification des index est terminée.
  0 fichiers non indexés analysés.
  0 fichiers non indéxés récupérés.
Étape*3*: Examen des descripteurs de sécurité...
La vérification des descripteurs de sécurité est terminée.
  355888 fichiers de données traités.
Étape*4*: Recherche de clusters incorrects dans les données des fichiers utilisa
teur...
  904514 fichiers traités.
La vérification des données du fichier est terminée.
Étape*5*: Recherche de clusters libres incorrects...
  636022115 clusters libres traités.
La vérification de l'espace libre est terminée.
[B]Windows a analysé le système de fichiers sans trouver de problème.[/B]
[B]Aucune autre action n'est requise.[/B]
   3814382 Mo d'espace disque total.
1357903848 Ko dans 547533 fichiers.
    131796 Ko dans 355890 index.
         0 Ko dans des secteurs défectueux.
   3804084 Ko utilisés par le système.
     65536 Ko occupés par le fichier journal.
   2484461 Mo disponibles sur le disque.
      4096 octets dans chaque unité d'allocation.
 976482047 unités d'allocation au total sur le disque.
 636022115 unités d'allocation disponibles sur le disque.

-What else could be done to find out what the problem is?
-Is it possible to disable the scan and tell the system to just mount it (anyways, it always ends by not finding any errors and to mount it) ?

Thanks.

 

[huotg01]

Other persons also complained about the fact that their USB 3 disk
-was flagged as needing a scan on boot (or connection)
-that a long scan was done
-that the same disk was declared clean by checkdsk on a PC (for NTFS)

and as long as I know there was no conclusion on the threads where these problems were reported.
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=18130
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=18709&page=2

I finally reverted to firmware:374.43_2 and, music at my ears, everything went well at the reboot. The disk was not erroneously flagged in error and therefore was immediately available.

I tried to move up to 45_0 but got again the problem with the disk, then back to 43_2 and the problem disappeared.

Having a plex server generating the "miniupnpd[924]: SendSSDPResponse(): sendto(udp): Operation not permitted" on 43_2, I switched to the fork 74.43_2-06j9527

Is this information helpful to those who know more about the boot process and the services involved during this period ?

 

[ml70]

No clear solution, but could it be possible to format the data partition as ext3 instead? Any problems i ever had with usb disks, were because NTFS...it's just not stable.

 

[huotg01]

No clear solution, but could it be possible to format the data partition as ext3 instead? Any problems i ever had with usb disks, were because NTFS...it's just not stable.

Ext3(or 4), yes I am willing to do it, but this disk is used to backup Windows NTFS/folders/disks. Can I do that ?

Thanks

 

[john9527]

The NTFS drivers are different between the 374 and 376 code levels, and likely explains what you are seeing. My French is very rusty, but it looks like you have a 4TB disk formatted with 4K clusters. One solution I think I remember seeing posted is to reduce the memory requirement for the driver by formatting with a larger cluster size...I think they used 16K. No guarantees, but something you may try if you get a chance.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Ext3(or 4), yes I am willing to do it, but this disk is used to backup Windows NTFS/folders/disks. Can I do that ?

It doesn't matter whether the disk is formatted as NTFS or ext2/3/4. If you're using SAMBA to share the disk Windows will see it as a SMB/CIFS file system.

 

[huotg01]

The NTFS drivers are different between the 374 and 376 code levels, and likely explains what you are seeing. My French is very rusty, but it looks like you have a 4TB disk formatted with 4K clusters. One solution I think I remember seeing posted is to reduce the memory requirement for the driver by formatting with a larger cluster size...I think they used 16K. No guarantees, but something you may try if you get a chance.

Your french is really good John. That's exactly that ;-)
Finally I came back to 376.48_1 and modified the 2 partitions on the 4TB disk. Both are still NTFS. One is reserved for the router (swap, Optware, etc) and the other is reserved for the backup. The swap space is now on file. I will keep your point in mind if the problems comes back. The main change is that I use the /configs/fstab to control the mounting of the disks/partitions. So far so good: no more scan. Thanks.

It doesn't matter whether the disk is formatted as NTFS or ext2/3/4. If you're using SAMBA to share the disk Windows will see it as a SMB/CIFS file system.

Good point. As said above, it works for now and I won't change anything at this moment but I will give it a try in a near future. Let's consider that NTFS "works", would ext4 be a better horse ?

Thanks

 

[huotg01]

Other than that, I have these 3 devices reported for my 2 partitions:

Disk /dev/sdc: 4000.7 GB, 4000752599040 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60799 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 4096 = 65802240 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks  Id System
/dev/sdc1               1       60718  3901677568   7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdc2           60718       60799     5263612   f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdc5           60718       60799     5263360   7 HPFS/NTFS

It doesn't seem to cause any problem, but if someone has an idea of what it is...

Thanks

 

[john9527]

It doesn't matter whether the disk is formatted as NTFS or ext2/3/4. If you're using SAMBA to share the disk Windows will see it as a SMB/CIFS file system.

One last thing to keep in mind using an ext format....

With NTFS in an emergency you can take the drive off the router and plug it directly to the PC to do a restore. Not possible with ext format without special drivers and a lot of workarounds.

 

[watusi]

With NTFS in an emergency you can take the drive off the router and plug it directly to the PC to do a restore. Not possible with ext format without special drivers and a lot of workarounds.

As an alternative, you can use SystemRescueCD or similar Linux "rescue" distribution. It's already set-up to work with most filesystem types.

These are typically very small, and will fit on a CD or a very small thumb drive. I usually put an extra partition on just about EVERY disk or usb stick with a copy.

Then you can boot from it on just about any PC or Mac.

I keep a fast 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive (the Silicon Power ones were recently on sale for $25, and they are FAST) with just SystemRescueCD and the rest of the drive as a blank data partition. So, if you have an ailing PC, you can just boot from it (assuming the PC isn't so ailing it won't boot from the USB drive), run diagnostics, get basic Internet access, see if you can repair or see what you can get off of the damaged filesystem.

For you case, just plug this in one USB slot, boot from it, then mount your potentially-damged USB stick in another USB slot.

 

[huotg01]

As an alternative, you can use SystemRescueCD or similar Linux "rescue" distribution. It's already set-up to work with most filesystem types.

These are typically very small, and will fit on a CD or a very small thumb drive. I usually put an extra partition on just about EVERY disk or usb stick with a copy.
Then you can boot from it on just about any PC or Mac.
I keep a fast 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive (the Silicon Power ones were recently on sale for $25, and they are FAST) with just SystemRescueCD and the rest of the drive as a blank data partition. So, if you have an ailing PC, you can just boot from it (assuming the PC isn't so ailing it won't boot from the USB drive), run diagnostics, get basic Internet access, see if you can repair or see what you can get off of the damaged filesystem.
For you case, just plug this in one USB slot, boot from it, then mount your potentially-damged USB stick in another USB slot.

The main question remains: "Is there any advantages to switch to ext4 ?" From what I read on many threads, it is not that obvious. Opinions are welcome ...

 

[watusi]

The main question remains: "Is there any advantages to switch to ext4 ?" From what I read on many threads, it is not that obvious. Opinions are welcome ...

1. It's faster:

http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=705430rpibencheng.png

2. It's a native Linux filesystem. I would expect it is better-maintained. I would expect it is, in general, more well-suited for use on Linux. Your router is running Linux, not Windows! Any NTFS filesystem for Linux is of secondary importance, and will get secondary attention, IMO.

3. It's more survivable on system crash/abrupt power off. Guess what, a router is a device that might be abruptly powered-off! Think your cable box HDR uses NTFS? Probably not.

 

[huotg01]

Thanks.

Not sure one is really better than the other (http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/55496/why-ext4-file-system-is-better-than-ntfs). Anyways, as you said, it a linux based system, therefore ext4 should for sure have a edge (the question is to quantify the edge...) on the other.

 

[sfx2000]

I have a new problem with my WD USB3 disk. The disk has 2 partitions:

• swap partition (Linux swap: 1Gb)
• data partition- NTFS

The system seems to scan the disk on all boots and on all connections, and this action delays the mounting of the disk (could take one hour).
As previously suggested in other threads, I did run a chkdsk on the disk (in fact on the ntfs partition), and there is absolutely no error reported:
Thanks.

The swap partition was unmounted with files open... so it marks the file system dirty, invoking the fsck before the disk can be mounted on startup.

Don't put swap on a removable disk, and you should be fine...

sfx

 

[ColinTaylor]

Other than that, I have these 3 devices reported for my 2 partitions:

Disk /dev/sdc: 4000.7 GB, 4000752599040 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60799 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 4096 = 65802240 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks  Id System
/dev/sdc1               1       60718  3901677568   7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdc2           60718       60799     5263612   f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdc5           60718       60799     5263360   7 HPFS/NTFS

It doesn't seem to cause any problem, but if someone has an idea of what it is...

Thanks

/dev/sdc2 is an extended partition. The extended partiton contains 1 logical partition, /dev/sdc5.

Logical partitions are used to get around the MS-DOS limitation of only allowing a maximum of 4 primary partitions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning#PC_partition_types

 

[ColinTaylor]

The swap partition was unmounted with files open... so it marks the file system dirty, invoking the fsck before the disk can be mounted on startup.

Unlikely. He's more or less proved that it was a driver issue from his subsequent posts.

Also, he's referring to a swap partition not a swap file, therefore it doesn't contain any files as it is just of part of virtual memory. In fact it doesn't even have a file system so there's nothing for fsck to check.

(PS I note that he later changed to using a swap file.)

 

[huotg01]

@sfx2000
@ColinTaylor

Here is the last output. I no longer have a swap partition. The second partition (sda5) is used for anything specific to the router, including the swap space (as mentioned by @ColinTaylor it is now a swap file). Both partitions are NTFS.

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks  Id System
/dev/sda1               1       60718  3901677568   7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2           60718       60799     5263612   f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5           60718       60799     5263360   7 HPFS/NTFS
Note: sector size is 4096 (not 512)

Everything seems to work well. I'm re-doing the initial backup using rsync, but with the "remote disk" at home. Look at the swap space used: 582256.

ASUSWRT-Merlin RT-AC68U_3.0.0.4 
Admin@1080-Router:/tmp/home/root# free
             total         used         free       shared      buffers
Mem:        255760       238100        17660            0          708
-/+ buffers:             237392        18368
Swap:      1048572       582256       466316

with a swappiness of 20.

Not very fast, but ok for a backup. Someday it will finished, and I will then move the disk to my partner's place...

Thanks for the information.

 

[huotg01]

Here is the end of it...

A tutorial is available in the wiki at the URL:
https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-me...c-through-a-SSH-tunnel-between-2-Asus-routers

There is a thread for questions, comments, recommendations at this place:
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?p=157040#post157040

GH