terastation

  • Thread starter Thread starter ivowel
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ivowel

hi folks:

in case anyone is considering a terastation, be aware of one
limitation---it can only set the time-stamp in 2 seconds interval.
this is because they have thrown an internal samba switch (dos filetime
resolution) in a particular way.

your only fix is to hack the firmware, but this would mean voiding the
warranty.

defacto, this means that your backup software may not work on
buffalotech's hardware. for example, mine copies a file from the
computer to a terastation. on the next run, it checks whether the
resulting timestamp is identical, i.e., whether they are still the same
file. because the terastation filestamp is different, the backup
software does not recognize it as the same file. voi-la---useless for
incremental backup.

you may also run into this at other instances where you want to
maintain a copy of a file on the terastation (e.g., rsync), and the
software checks whether the files are the same.

it is not feasible to do a full backup to a terastation every time. at
de-facto 10MByte/s speed (even at GigaE), it takes 2 days of full
network use to fill it.

quite a disappointment. hope this helps some others avoid it.

/iaw
 
In said:
hi folks:
Click to expand...
in case anyone is considering a terastation, be aware of one
limitation---it can only set the time-stamp in 2 seconds interval.
this is because they have thrown an internal samba switch (dos filetime
resolution) in a particular way.
Click to expand...

Seems tupid to me. Any particulr reason why they are doing that?
your only fix is to hack the firmware, but this would mean voiding the
warranty.
Click to expand...
defacto, this means that your backup software may not work on
buffalotech's hardware. for example, mine copies a file from the
computer to a terastation. on the next run, it checks whether the
resulting timestamp is identical, i.e., whether they are still the same
file. because the terastation filestamp is different, the backup
software does not recognize it as the same file. voi-la---useless for
incremental backup.
Click to expand...

Not surptising. Even the unix archiver "tar" would have trouble
doing incremental backups with this.
you may also run into this at other instances where you want to
maintain a copy of a file on the terastation (e.g., rsync), and the
software checks whether the files are the same.
Indeed.

it is not feasible to do a full backup to a terastation every time. at
de-facto 10MByte/s speed (even at GigaE), it takes 2 days of full
network use to fill it.
Click to expand...

That is slow. I would expect 30-40MB/s from such a product.
quite a disappointment. hope this helps some others avoid it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting the info here!

Arno
 
defacto, this means that your backup software may not work on
buffalotech's hardware. for example, mine copies a file from the
computer to a terastation. on the next run, it checks whether the
resulting timestamp is identical, i.e., whether they are still the same
file. because the terastation filestamp is different, the backup
software does not recognize it as the same file. voi-la---useless for
incremental backup.
Click to expand...

Some software allows you to set a window for time-stamp equivalency.
I had a similar problem with one of my Iomega network drives and
Second Copy 2000, and they showed me a hidden option that let me
ignore time-stamp differences of less than X seconds.

I set it for something like 4 seconds, and no more issues.
 
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