Help with 3TB drive for USB - RT-N66U

[katana13]

Hi guys,

Looking for some help with formatting a 3TB WD Red drive to my Asus RT-N66U running Merlin's .31

After reading and searching through the forums, I've learned I should do EXT3 for best results. Downside to that is Win7 systems won't be able to read it easily without installing driver program. Merlin mentioned in another post that official Asus firmware (which his is built on) has optimized NTFS driver for good performance. Is that NTFS performance equal to EXT3 or negligible enough that I should stick to NTFS? I read EXT3 is required for Optware but I don't think I will be using that in near future.

I will be using the drive to stream movies (if it works smooth enough), do scheduled nightly backups of my important files, image of my SSD etc. Is it possible or recommended to have a 2TB EXT3 partition and 1 NTFS remaining partition? I tried to do this in Acronis Disk Director but the NTFS is always showing as needs formatting when I go into windows (formatted fine in Acronis and Easus PM). Did it make a difference that I have the 2TB EXT3 partition first then, the NTFS 1TB?

Any help appreciated, thanks!

 

[GoNz0]

windows cannot read when connected via USB to the windows Pc but it can read EXT* partitions fine via the router.

I should know, I have done it

EaseUS Partition Master is a free program that will format it on your PC, when done hook it to the router and your away.

 

[katana13]

thanks for the info Gonzo, I know I can access EXT3 via router. However, is it similar speeds for NTFS vs EXT3 because of Asus firmware's NTFS driver in case of the RT-N66U?

Can/Should I do 2 partitions, 1 for NTFS and 1 for EXT3?

 

[GoNz0]

to be honest i changed to EXT3 as NTFS caused issues, odd reboots, hangs causing reboots so I gave in after 2 hours and formatted in EXT3, been fine since. plus you do not get the fragmentation issues like you do on NTFS.

 

[RMerlin]

The NTFS driver Asus uses has trouble with larger drives. Go with ext3 if you are going to use either a 3 TB HDD, or one with 4 KB sectors.