NAS, new drive, cannot expand NTFS volume due to cluster size/count

[DQ]

Wow, who knew a NAS was this much of a pain. OK so it it's probably more of because how I use it.

Anyways, looking for some advice here. I just added a new drive to my NAS. All good there. It folded right into the RAID 5. I expanded the pool no issues as well.

However, when I went to windows to expand the volume it gave me an error. I would be over the cluster limit. I probably took the default 4k size when I created the volume.

I am assuming the answer here is larger clusters which would reduce drastically the cluster count. I know I can wipe it and reformat it and change the cluster size but I would be restoring data for days. So I bought some software which I thought would do this on the fly. Paragon Hard Disk Manager. However it oddly claims it needs some enormous amount of space to do this operation.

This is not a problem I have faced at any point ever at home or at work. So just looking for some advice.

Thanks.

 

[DQ]

I seem to be getting stopped at every turn on this. Looks like I might be formatting the whole volume and restoring. Ugh, that is going to take forever. If I do I am sticking with NTFS I think (vs REFS) and will use 64k clusters.

 

[James]

Wow, who knew a NAS was this much of a pain.

I did.

Anyways, looking for some advice here. It folded right into the RAID 5.

My advice is, stay away from RAID for private storage. It is a PITA if your hardware (the NAS, the controller, ...) fails to recover anything from it. And it is no replacement for backups!
Just use single volume discs, formatted with a filesystem you can easily read (NTFS, if you like) and create backups, e.g. by mirroring the discs on schedule.

 

[cartman0208]

Since you did not mention it, I assume you are talking about iSCSI.
Then, unfortunately, you are right

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/file-server/ntfs-overview

My question would be ... why iSCSI?
You need a (pseudo)-fixed drive in the computer?
If not, just let the NAS handle the filesystem.
If it's a proper NAS, it can do SMB.
No more issues extending storage.
Permissions should handle the same as NTFS.

 

[DQ]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Ultimately, nothing will change the cluster size on the fly. There is no getting around a reformat in one form or another.

Cartman, I went with ISCSI because the performance from 1 box to the NAS was awesome with jumbo frames enabled in my testing and I just did not want to dink with SMB. HOWEVER, at this point I am going to go SMB. I want multiple boxes to be able to access the volume at once and with ISCSI you cannot do that (well you are not supposed to let's put it that way).

James, I actually run a RAID 5 so I can have some disk redundancy. But I do also run backups.

I am going to triple-check my backups, bust the ISCSI volume and create an SMB one and run it like that. This I am sure will cause me some sort of heartburn but I will get past it. Plus I find such projects fun.

As this project goes on and grows I evolve what I do based on what I learn from doing dumb stuff and from smart stuff other folks say.

Thanks for y'alls input I appreciate it.

 

[Watcher0363]

I have been watching this thread to see where it goes. Because my NAS experience is limited. I do have a couple of questions. What brand of NAS do you have? How are you connecting your boxes to the NAS, wifi or hard wired?

 

[DQ]

I have been watching this thread to see where it goes. Because my NAS experience is limited. I do have a couple of questions. What brand of NAS do you have? How are you connecting your boxes to the NAS, wifi or hard wired?

Hey man. I have a QNAP. Everything is wired 2.5GB ethernet. My plex box is a dedicated PC. Meaning I do not run plex on the QNAP even though I could.

I ended up destroying the ISCSI LUN and created 1 big SMB share for Plex to hit. I am in the process of restoring all my data now to the NAS. It's a pain but ultimately it will be more convenient this way and Plex won't know the difference.

 

[DQ]

For anyone keeping up with this saga or just looking for info here is more information.

Switching from an ISCSI termination to a shared folder on the NAS has basically hosed my Plex install. After I put all the data back on the NAS I am having to readd my libraries. Not the worst thing in the world but my Plex install is all confused and I am having to sort that out.

The rub is this. Plex when run as a service cannot use mapped drives. The 3rd party add on I use for Plex as a Service helps with that some but essentially my ISCSI termination for drive D is not the seen the same as mapped drive D so everything has to be readded.

Now I did complicate things a little bit for myself. After the library locations were hosed I upgraded the Plex as a Service install (they just had a new update after a few years) and I changed to the 64bit version of Plex. I had been running the 32bit for years and just updating the versions from within Plex.

Anyways, for anyone looking to change things in plex here are some warnings:

- mapped drives won't work or not like you expect them to (I ended up using a UNC path)
- supposedly if you run plex as a service it cannot use hardware transcoding but I have seen otherwise so that might be old info
- accessing a NAS via SMB is far more complex than an ISCSI termination (which is just seen as a local drive), but the difference is only one machine can access that termination whereas with an SMB share any device can
- if you are creating a large NTFS volume for this purpose (either on a NAS or otherwise) use large cluster sizes, I recommend either 32k or 64k as it offers better performance and with the default of 4k you hit a cluster limit at around 30TB
- I have noticed a difference in how Windows 10 and Windows 11 access the SMB share on the NAS. Windows 10 has no issues accessing the NAS without auth but Windows 11 is forcing it. Still getting to the bottom of that but I did notice it.

I will add to this list if I bump into more stuff.

 

[DQ]

On the specific topic of Windows 10 accessing my SMB shares on the NAS and Windows 11 not, I found a few under the hood changes in Windows that related specifically to this but they did not seem to help. No matter what I tried Windows 11 would always try to auth to the share even though I had guest/public access on the share . Now keep in mind my PC's are joined to a domain so there is that level to this.

I did get this to work but what I did was to AD join the NAS and gave permission to the Plex share to the account I use on my PC.

 

[cartman0208]

You have your own AD in your home? Nice ... I could not bring myself to do it ... don't know where to put the DC
I just wanted to mention another possible solution ... but that would probably only work without AD
Run the Plex Service as the user you are logged in (should be Admin on that box)
Then create the same user on the NAS and give it access to the share.
It might work because both local users have the same name.

 

[DQ]

You have your own AD in your home? Nice ... I could not bring myself to do it ... don't know where to put the DC
I just wanted to mention another possible solution ... but that would probably only work without AD
Run the Plex Service as the user you are logged in (should be Admin on that box)
Then create the same user on the NAS and give it access to the share.
It might work because both local users have the same name.

I do have my own DC along with a few other such boxes. But I run them as a VM which is how I get away with doing that. Even my firewall is a VM. Although, Plex itself is a dedicated PC for hardware needs reasons and why I keep it off the QNAP.

But yes I did what you suggested and it just would not connect. In fact the way it's working now is the local admin account which runs Plex (not the most secure way to do that I know) has cached AD credentials and it accesses the share using that. And it seems to work fine so I am just leaving it be because as much as I love this stuff even I got sick of dealing with it.

The QNAP has some weird logic about accounts and access and of course so does Windows and it seems to differ between 10 and 11. So while I have it working in possibly not the most efficient way it works and they can all talk. If it hoses up on me later I will try to get to the bottom of it but right now I am sick of tinkering with it because I just want my content to watch. I use my Plex far more than any streaming service

 

[DQ]

As a sidenote. I forget who mentioned GoodSync initially sometime back but I now swear by it and it rocks. It restored all my data and has allowed me to tinker with it so that I can do some very specific things I needed. Great software, great company.

 

[cartman0208]

I must admit, I'm running the Plex server on the NAS, which is why the media-datastore blends in perfectly.
Since I prefer direct play, not much CPU is needed... only bandwidth.
But if your NAS is domain joined and you run the Plex service as a domain user which also has permissions to the NAS share... it should work
Alternatively .. if you still have the nerve to test
Try to add the computer account to a security group and give that group access to the share. Then run the service as SYSTEM.

 

[DQ]

I must admit, I'm running the Plex server on the NAS, which is why the media-datastore blends in perfectly.
Since I prefer direct play, not much CPU is needed... only bandwidth.
But if your NAS is domain joined and you run the Plex service as a domain user which also has permissions to the NAS share... it should work
Alternatively .. if you still have the nerve to test
Try to add the computer account to a security group and give that group access to the share. Then run the service as SYSTEM.

Dude I am afraid to dink with it at this point. I am also using the Plex as a Service wrapper so it creates more complexity on the account situation. I already had to reconfig Plex from scratch once!

I use direct play in the house (although audio transcodes unless I am in the living room where the receiver is) but I have a family member that uses my antenna. So that is where the transcoding comes in. But it's also another reason I need a dedicated box, because of the tuner for the antenna.

If I run into a snag with it again and I have to change it again I will probably go whole hog and redo the accounts so they make more sense and just fix whatever changes. But for now it's all fat and happy. Good convo though, much appreciated.

 

[cartman0208]

Understandable ... Although my Plex is pretty much set to automatic, I'd hate to lose my watched/unwatched tags

 

[DQ]

Understandable ... Although my Plex is pretty much set to automatic, I'd hate to lose my watched/unwatched tags

Oh yeah, I lost all that stuff but I am ok with that part. I use Tautalli anyway for stats and logs. I think those got kept. But the interesting thing here is at the end of the day I think Plex is meant to be stable and automatic. If you dink with it at all, it gets uber confused.