Help with creating a backup with a physical drive

General
1

I want to make a backup of my node using a physical drive but when I tried to format the harddrive to EXT4 on a Linux using the following commands:

List all block devices

lsblk

Unmount the SSD partition

sudo umount /dev/sdb1

Format the SSD to EXT4

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1

Verify the format

lsblk -f

It showed it worked & format was complete but when I plugged that newly-formatted harddrive into the USB port of the node & hit refresh no drive was detected. Anything I am missing?

(Interestingly, when I connected the harddrive to the node when it was formatted as NTFS or exFAT, & hit refresh, both times it recognized the harddrive but would not allow the backup to commence.)

Thanks,
Bruce

2

This looks correct to me. When you disconnected it and connected again to the initial linux machine, was it detected then?

3

Thanks Stu – I will try & see if it is detected again on the original linux machine & post again after I try.

Sorry for not replying sooner – just got back from Nashville!

1 Like
4

Hi Stu,

I finally got around to attempting this again.

I successfully formatted a 4 TB SATA harddisk as EXT4 on the Linux, I formatted a 2 TB SSD harddisk as EXT4 on the Linux, and i formatted a 32 GB memory stick as EXT4 on the Linux using the above 4 command lines.

I ejected each one from the Linux laptop then plugged back into the Linux laptop’s USB port and all three were detected by the Linux laptop.

Unfortunately, when I placed in the Start9 USB ports and hit refresh, none of those three memory device drives were detected. I also tried switching to different USB ports on the Start9 Pure. I also tried connecting the 2 TB SSD harddisk using the USB-C port instead of the regular USB port and it still did not detect the drive.

The flashing light does come on when the harddisks or memory stick is plugged in. Is it possible that there is not enough power since none of these three device drives had external power (all used the power from the Start9 Pure) as seen in the instructions (see attached screenshot)?

0-Backup Create
0-Backup Create1330×615 68.9 KB

Any other ideas why it would still not be detecting the EXT4 drives? Thanks again!

5

Power supply to the USB ports would not be a problem on the Pure, but depending on the specific model of your Pure, you would need to stick to the ports on the back.

If those are the ports you’re using, and all drives are still going undetected, I’m struggling to think what the cause might be.

I guess the next step would be to set up SSH and go through this process:
https://docs.start9.com/0.3.5.x/misc-guides/backup-mount#backup-mount

That would either work, or provide some clue as to what’s going on.