Hi everybody!
I'm looking for an external HDD for use with SMB in the D-Link DIR-505 with OpenWrt, and I'm not sure about the max size that I can use.
I was planning to buy an HDD with at least 2TB, does anyone knows if it's possible to use a 4TB HDD?
I advise against buying large disks to use it with such a underpowered devices like DIR-505 (400mhz mips CPU)
there are very cheap boards like orange pi zero (100mbps lan) or nanopi zero (gigabit lan) (7-10$) that will provide noticeable performance gains
There's technically no difference between disk sizes as long as the filesystem you intend to use supports those sizes. All modern native Linux filesystems support the biggest disks easily nowadays. NTFS should as well (exFAT might do as well, but I'm not familiar with it and have no idea if OpenWrt supports it - maybe with additional kernel modules).
That being said, @maurer's advice is the best there is: your device is underpowered to get any meaningful performance from it. If you want a cheap NAS, look at another solution.
Thank you @maurer, I was missing this. I have no idea about how poor can be the performance of DIR-505, my intention at this time is just to learn and give a "new life" for the AP. I'm already considering a hardware upgrade in the future, because of this my intention is to buy a "huge" HDD for now.
Last, but not least, I'll not to access the files all the time. I am intending to use like an "Apple Time Machine" and to save images of surveillance(motion activated) for now.
Thank you @Borromini, very well remembered. My hardware is not so modern but de fs in use is actual. I'll have no problem with the capacity of the HDD, just with performance.
I think the best scenario for your device is to store documents and small images like 1 max 2 per sec - but the images should not exceed 4K.
Anyway fi you want to start with this and experiment - go ahead but remember to save some $ for a new board and don't waste time if you notice things are not working
Just a quick heads-up: While USB to SATA adapters do not limit the drive size in theory, in practice there are some adapters out there that can't handle drives larger than 2TB.
This has to do with the mass-storage (MSC) specification the adapter uses; Some older USB adapters only use 32-bit LBAs and therefor cannot properly address drives larger than 2TB.
Contemporary adapters should not have this limitation and use 64-bit LBAs, handling any current and future drive size at least until the inevitable apocalypse hits. But you might fall into this pothole if you are using that ten year old USB SATA case you had lying around (or a cheap chinese USB case using ten year old chips they had lying around.)
Well, it seems I'll definitely have problems using my DIR-505 as a NAS...
I'd performed a performance test with a USB flash drive and...
Running warmup...
Running a 400MB file write on U: 5 times...
Iteration 1: 3,41 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 3,74 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 3,69 MB/sec
Iteration 4: 3,85 MB/sec
Iteration 5: 3,86 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Average (W): 3,71 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Running a 400MB file read on U: 5 times...
An error occured: A solicitação não pôde ser executada devido a um erro do dispositivo de E/S.
Time to think about pi options.
Thank you very much, guys!
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