Synology NAS - Using NTFS on external drive?

[Eug]

I have a 2x2 TB Synology 211j running in JBOD mode for storage at home. I am using a 3 TB USB 2 drive as a backup to that. Recommended for external drives is EXT3/4, with FAT32 as an option, but since some of my files are greater than 4 GB, I can't use FAT32. So, I am using EXT4 for the time being.

However, I note that NTFS is also an option. They just don't list it as one of the preferred options. Anyone know why? Is it just a speed thing, or is it more a reliability thing, or is it both? Or is it something else?

I'd prefer having an NTFS backup since none of my other machines understand EXT4. This article says Synology's NTFS support is slow, but says nothing about features or reliability. You can't natively format an external drive to NTFS using the NAS, but I don't care because I cam simply use my Windows PC to format the drive first.

 

[Kusnierek]

NTFS is fine to store with, most external drives are pre-formatted with NTFS anyway. Also, exFAT is light and quick if it supports it, doesn't have the 4GB file size limit, and is is read/write compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 and beyond, and Windows of course. If you have Linux though, it's a bit more complicated.

 

[Eug]

Any idea how slow the NTFS (3G-NTFS?) driver is for the Synology? I'm guessing it won't make that much of a difference because the drive is USB 2.0 anyway. My 211j doesn't have USB 3 or eSATA ports.

 

[Kusnierek]

If you have Snow Leopard or Lion, I believe they both have native NTFS read/write support. At any rate, yeah you won't notice any slow-down with drivers on a USB 2.0 drive.

 

[Eug]

OS X has native NTFS read. No write support. I haven't attempted installing the 3G-NTFS driver on OS X because the instructions are rather nebulous and it requires MacFuse apparently. It's the Tuxera guys who wrote it, but they want you to buy their faster commercial product. Same thing with Paragon. I don't use exFAT because the Synology doesn't support it.

In any case, I'm going to reformat this backup drive for the Synology NAS to NTFS (using m Win PC). We'll see how it goes.

 

[Eug]

Nope. Assuming this Synology is using 3G-NTFS: It turns out that on embedded devices, ext3/4 on USB 2.0 is much, much faster than 3G-NTFS. According to Tuxera, who wrote and maintain 3G-NTFS:

That's dismal. Less than 10 MB/s read, and maybe 5 Mb/s write.

I guess I'm sticking with ext4.

BTW, even with a SATA interface, the performance of NTFS-3G on embedded devices is dismal: