NDX and external HDD

We don't officially support USB attached hard discs (even self powered ones) for a number of reasons but they will be seen as a USB mass storage device just like a USB memory stick.

Phil

Thank you Phil.

cheers

Can you elaborate why?  Seems that a USB hard drive (self powered or not) would be a simple alternative for some that don't have whole house distributed systems/NAS storage/cloud (I detest that terminology) storage.

?

USB chipsets provide no messaging to the operating system about energy-saving status–if a drive goes into a sleep mode, there is no way for the host (computer) to know that the drive volume is no longer accessible. This has little to do with the drive mechanism and more to do with the USB drive housing chipset.

This issue posed a similar problem back in the day when FireWire hard drives were all the rage for video or audio storage (thinking Oxford911 here). Later FireWire chipsets could be configured to disable energy saver modes.

For a real-time system such as a mediaserver, extensive efforts are made by mediaserver drive manufacturers, in firmware, to insure immediate seek/read/write access via the data bus. All the USB chipset(s) become[s] is another interlocutor which can interfere with availability and throughput to the system.

Network drives, by their very nature, are external and non-persistent, so this is more appropriately managed through file-sharing messaging and protocols. In many cases, these devices have capable host processors and RTOSes which can be configured never to go to sleep.

Ah, thanks Dave.  Figured there was a good reason and now I learned why!