Ok so now I have TrueNAS set up properly and have been migrated some files over from a dying QNAP via SMB - I find a large chunk of the files on the QNAP are “gone”
(This is precisely why I have moved back to a TrueNAS NAS set up in the first place!)
Talk about learning the hard way!
Further investigation reveals I had set up this QNAP QFS file system in the dim dark ages (like 20 years ago) when I didn’t really understand data protection - as a 4x HDD JBOD. In other words no raid or disc redundancy and I am getting a disc deterioration warning on QNAP disc 1.
Obviously I am going to try recover the lost files from that disc before I go thru the laborious task of re backup the media etc but this leads me to my question.
What is actually the best way to move large volumes of data into a ZFS pool?
Is SMB really the only option for file transfer these days or is there still a way to mount an NTFS or EXT4 drive in TrueNAS and copy the files into the ZFS pool manually?
If direct file transfer is an option which of EXT4 or NTFS is the best format option?
I am on the current TrueNAS Scale CE firmware
I don’t want to format the HDD for the archiving then find I have done all the backuping on the wrong type of formatted drive.
It’s not the only option. You could sftp/scp them. You could rsync them. Probably others I am not thinking of. All depends what options you have on the QNAP. If the system is functioning, I’d probably just use scp if I didn’t want to mess with SMB. I don’t think Truenas has ext4 drivers off hand.
If you had a QNAP backup somewhere, might be a way to read it from the backup depending on what that is.
Thanks for the reply. I think you have misunderstood the question.
I am not asking about moving files from the QNAP, I am asking about the best way to move new data from a usb mountable HDD…
I’d be surprised if the ext4 driver was excised from
The kernel, but there certainly is no alternate fs support baked into the gui/middleware.
So, in theory, you may be able to manually mount drives, in practise you are supposed to use a Network protocol to access your storage on your Network Attached Storage device.
And SMB is generally the best of these when going from Windows or macOS
Rsync can be a good option to sync an old NAS… especially if its flaky.
And you can have the two devises directly communicate that way.
You’ll note all of the ext systems are missing now. Try it on a non Truenas Debian system, they are not missing of course! And if you still don’t believe it, attach an external ext4 drive and go ahead, try that mount. I’ve done it, fails.
I don’t understand WHY they did that, but they did quite some time back. Maybe it makes the kernel smaller, a goal of theirs. I suspect they did it at the time they removed the old import option, or whatever it was called. But am not sure when, just been a while.
Ahem, I do see that (now), my understanding of /proc/filesystem was clearly not what I thought.
But I really did try and mount an ext4 volume I had in some previous version. Could be I made a typo so a false memory.
Thanks, it’s actually good to know and may help the OP.
EDIT, this is funny, how do you read this doc page:
Maybe it doesn’t apply to Debian so maybe that’s why I relied on that memory from redhat days. The doc is likely missing a key piece. I think the ext4 module is being dynamically loaded and isn’t in the kernel perhaps. That’s what the Debian docs say about /proc/filesystems
Yes. It may not work with devices. Or it may not work auto-magically.
but, you can mount ext4 imgs, and incus would require the kernel to have support for the containers to work properly too, because the kernel is shared.
