exFAT support for external drives

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AsklepiOS
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Re: exFAT support for external drives

Post by AsklepiOS »

+1, really really need exFat!
ddrum2000
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Re: exFAT support for external drives

Post by ddrum2000 »

+1 for exFAT support
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schumaku
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Re: exFAT support for external drives

Post by schumaku »

All +1 kiddies here:

Have you READ what was written in this thread before?

Are you willing to pay yet another amount of money per NAS to get _proprietary_ exFAT licensed?
nottooloud
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Re: exFAT support for external drives

Post by nottooloud »

schumaku wrote:Are you willing to pay yet another amount of money per NAS to get _proprietary_ exFAT licensed?
Yes, unless another cross-platform format is available with large file support.
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Re: exFAT support for external drives

Post by schumaku »

nottooloud wrote: unless another cross-platform format is available with large file support.
Well, with NTFS there certainly is - howevr, this is a) not the default for large capacity (anysize)SD cards, and b) might be not supported by some specific systems.
nottooloud
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Re: exFAT support for external drives

Post by nottooloud »

schumaku wrote:
nottooloud wrote: unless another cross-platform format is available with large file support.
Well, with NTFS there certainly is - howevr, this is a) not the default for large capacity (anysize)SD cards, and b) might be not supported by some specific systems.
I was under the impression that FUSE and company were broken under Yosemite.
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Re: exFAT support for external drives

Post by schumaku »

nottooloud wrote:I was under the impression that FUSE and company were broken under Yosemite.
Now this tastes like a specific usage case again...

To me exFAT is required because of some gadgets like cameras, embedded car systems, ... and the like mainly support exFAT, and the SD card vendors default to exFAT, ... with the exFAT support on the NAS we can directly import storage media (pics, videos) or export (videos, movies) to be compatible with this de-facto industry standard, and to avoid transferring large amounts of data over a still comparable slow WLAN.

To me, external exchangeable HDD and the like are dead horses in the time of networking, NAS, ...
nottooloud
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Re: exFAT support for external drives

Post by nottooloud »

schumaku wrote:
nottooloud wrote:I was under the impression that FUSE and company were broken under Yosemite.
Now this tastes like a specific usage case again...
FUSE is how you support NTFS on Macs, unless you're going to pay for Tuxera or some such. OSX can read NTFS, but not write it. Even if it worked, if additional apps are required, it's not really cross platform. EXFAT just works.

I'm confused, though. You sound like you're for EXFAT and against EXFAT.
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schumaku
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Re: exFAT support for external drives

Post by schumaku »

nottooloud wrote:FUSE is how you support NTFS on Macs, unless you're going to pay for Tuxera or some such. OSX can read NTFS, but not write it. Even if it worked, if additional apps are required, it's not really cross platform. EXFAT just works.
Gee, complain in Cupertino, CA ... I said it's a specific usage case, caused by Apple ... in my primary Windows world, no issues with NTFS.

Beyond _if_ external direct attach storage would have any real-world usage left ... in a private cloud world, to me it has not. The only areas we still use DAS is for technical support and maintenance of certain embedded systems.
nottooloud wrote:I'm confused, though. You sound like you're for EXFAT and against EXFAT.
No, not at all - the only reason why I would like to see exFAT is to be able to read (and for a few usage case) to write exFAT media - but not as a "universal" portable file system.
stevetoney
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Re: exFAT support for external drives

Post by stevetoney »

since the NAS'es are now touting the PC features (even drive use of the NAS a PC with KVM connection QvPC and HDMI for direct media out and virtualized OS support -- seems the logical step would be support read/write of SD cards card on the NAS in the main format used by SD cards -- as this is largest media type for photo's video's etc.. transfer from/to the SD card.. once plugged into USB

there could also be some uses for a native SD slot on the front a NAS device -- but this is not important - if you had a flexible way to make use of SD cards that are in carriers that can plug into the USB ports
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Re: exFAT support for external drives

Post by psikey »

Having read this thread, what would be the suggested alternative for my scenario.

Samsung Smart Phone & Tablets can read exFAT so with a USB dive formatted to exFAT I can link it to the phone to play large movie files off (I have a fast Corsair 256GB USB) when away from free or fast internet to my Plex server.

Ideally I want to copy files from my QNAP onto the exFAT USB but can't. FAT can't handle the large files plus Android phones/tablets won't normally read NTFS.

At the moment I have to copy the files to a PC from the NAS then onto the USB. I also use this one stick at work for file transfer as needed to many off-network Windows PC's so even if phones can read EXT3/4 USB the PC's cant by default (not tested if phone can read EXT3/4 USB).

With this being a fast 200MB/s+ r/w USB3 its much quicker than transferring files over wifi.
florent13
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Re: exFAT support for external drives

Post by florent13 »

psikey wrote: USB EXT3/4 USB the PC's cant by default (not tested if phone can read EXT3/4 USB).
Try install Pargon ExtFs, to read EXT3 on windows.
kupy123
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Re: exFAT support for external drives

Post by kupy123 »

Just in case anyone really needs it, it turns out its not that difficult to get an exFAT device mounted on an Intel based QNAP.

The QNAP already has all needed libraries to use the current exfat-fuse implementation.

It will require SSH access and a bit of shell knowledge but it's reasonably easy.

What I did was to download the exfat-fuse ubuntu 12.04.5 deb file on a linux machine. Unpack the deb file. Copy the mount.exfat-fuse binary to my qnap. And launch it using the proper libraries.

Let's start:

1.- Getting the mount.exfat-fuse binary
There are several ways to get this binary. I just did a "#>sudo apt-get download exfat-utils:i386" on an Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS machine I had laying around, which downloaded the .deb file. Then I ran a "#>dpkg -x exfat-fuse_1.0.1-1~ubuntu12.04.1_i386.deb fuse" which unpacked the files contained in the .deb to a folder called fuse, where I found the binary at "fuse/sbin/mount.exfat-fuse".
You can also download the deb file from a repository website and unpack it in any other way you want.

2.- Getting the binary to work
The mount.exfat-fuse binary we just downloaded and unpacked is a 32 bit executable with some dynamic library dependencies. Fortunately all these dependencies are already met by our QNAP (at least mine).
I just copied (throw SCP, but you can do it by any other means) the mount.exfat-fuse binary to my QNAP and then logged in through SSH.
I connected my 256Gb USB pen to the USB3.0 (not that really matters the specs of the USB for the process but it matters for why I need exFAT*) port of my QNAP and waited a bit. Then I ran "dmesg" just to see which dev file my QNAP selected for my USB thumb. It was sdi1:

[1121772.069940] sd 23:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg8 type 0
[1121772.070104] sd 23:0:0:0: [sdi] 494403584 512-byte logical blocks: (253 GB/235 GiB)
[1121772.070231] sd 23:0:0:0: [sdi] Write Protect is off
[1121772.070233] sd 23:0:0:0: [sdi] Mode Sense: 45 00 00 00
[1121772.070356] sd 23:0:0:0: [sdi] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[1121773.234318] sdi: sdi1
[1121773.234994] sd 23:0:0:0: [sdi] Attached SCSI removable disk

So i created a mount point and mounted the device
#>mkdir /mnt/sdi1
#>./mount.exfat-fuse /dev/sdi1 /mnt/sdi1

And I was able to read and write the USB throw /mnt/sdi1

Hope it helps anyone in need.

*: Although I'm not confortable with the fact that exFAT is a proprietary filesystem, there is no alternative, so the "no thanks, I will use the OpenSource 100% free alternative" does not apply. QNAP are devices we pay for. And are supposed to be market ready for enterprise use. It's not a matter of why someone could ever need exFAT. The fact is exFAT is here to stay, and any NAS system, proud to have not only an N for Network but also an S for Storage, should have native support the same way it has support for any other filesystem around. Yes, I don't like at all the fact that Microsoft has a patent over exFAT and I also don't like the fact that they have enough power to impose it's use in devices so widely used as SD cards, but for now I cannot fight this. In the other side it turns out that now I must solve my customers issues fast. So now, I need exFAT support.
ddrum2000
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Re: exFAT support for external drives

Post by ddrum2000 »

Is this something that you could make an ipkg for? I would love to see this!
Deathalo
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Re: exFAT support for external drives

Post by Deathalo »

kupy123 wrote:Just in case anyone really needs it, it turns out its not that difficult to get an exFAT device mounted on an Intel based QNAP.

The QNAP already has all needed libraries to use the current exfat-fuse implementation.

It will require SSH access and a bit of shell knowledge but it's reasonably easy.

What I did was to download the exfat-fuse ubuntu 12.04.5 deb file on a linux machine. Unpack the deb file. Copy the mount.exfat-fuse binary to my qnap. And launch it using the proper libraries.

Let's start:

1.- Getting the mount.exfat-fuse binary
There are several ways to get this binary. I just did a "#>sudo apt-get download exfat-utils:i386" on an Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS machine I had laying around, which downloaded the .deb file. Then I ran a "#>dpkg -x exfat-fuse_1.0.1-1~ubuntu12.04.1_i386.deb fuse" which unpacked the files contained in the .deb to a folder called fuse, where I found the binary at "fuse/sbin/mount.exfat-fuse".
You can also download the deb file from a repository website and unpack it in any other way you want.

2.- Getting the binary to work
The mount.exfat-fuse binary we just downloaded and unpacked is a 32 bit executable with some dynamic library dependencies. Fortunately all these dependencies are already met by our QNAP (at least mine).
I just copied (throw SCP, but you can do it by any other means) the mount.exfat-fuse binary to my QNAP and then logged in through SSH.
I connected my 256Gb USB pen to the USB3.0 (not that really matters the specs of the USB for the process but it matters for why I need exFAT*) port of my QNAP and waited a bit. Then I ran "dmesg" just to see which dev file my QNAP selected for my USB thumb. It was sdi1:

[1121772.069940] sd 23:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg8 type 0
[1121772.070104] sd 23:0:0:0: [sdi] 494403584 512-byte logical blocks: (253 GB/235 GiB)
[1121772.070231] sd 23:0:0:0: [sdi] Write Protect is off
[1121772.070233] sd 23:0:0:0: [sdi] Mode Sense: 45 00 00 00
[1121772.070356] sd 23:0:0:0: [sdi] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[1121773.234318] sdi: sdi1
[1121773.234994] sd 23:0:0:0: [sdi] Attached SCSI removable disk

So i created a mount point and mounted the device
#>mkdir /mnt/sdi1
#>./mount.exfat-fuse /dev/sdi1 /mnt/sdi1

And I was able to read and write the USB throw /mnt/sdi1

Hope it helps anyone in need.

*: Although I'm not confortable with the fact that exFAT is a proprietary filesystem, there is no alternative, so the "no thanks, I will use the OpenSource 100% free alternative" does not apply. QNAP are devices we pay for. And are supposed to be market ready for enterprise use. It's not a matter of why someone could ever need exFAT. The fact is exFAT is here to stay, and any NAS system, proud to have not only an N for Network but also an S for Storage, should have native support the same way it has support for any other filesystem around. Yes, I don't like at all the fact that Microsoft has a patent over exFAT and I also don't like the fact that they have enough power to impose it's use in devices so widely used as SD cards, but for now I cannot fight this. In the other side it turns out that now I must solve my customers issues fast. So now, I need exFAT support.
I'll have to try this out, thanks! As an editor dealing with massive files on both PC and MAC, exFAT has become the new standard for our drives. I have a 128GB USB3 flash drive that is formatted exFAT for dealing with our large files. Being able to plug this directly into my NAS to dump files is a must. Anyone who shrugs off exFAT as a niche file system or unnecessary for a NAS just flat out does not know what they're talking about.
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