How to perform a health check on external backup drive

[maxbraketorque]

Somewhat surprisingly, there is no means within the ADM GUI to perform a health check on an externally attached backup drive. ASUSTOR really needs to add this because people frequently will have external backup drives attached to their NAS. Hopefully this feature will eventually be added to the GUI interface, but in the mean time, there is a way to do it via the command line. For anyone familiar with the Linux command line, this should be pretty easy, and actually, its pretty easy for anyone familiar with the command line. The only tricky part is identifying the drive name. Here's a quick how-to that covers the steps for anyone who uses a command line.

- ssh into the NAS as root. The admin accounts do not have the same level of privileges. If ssh is not enabled, then enable it.
- Find the external drive. The command to use is, "parted -l". (That's a lower case L.) This will show the SCSI letter/number names of all the devices. Turns out my external drive was at sdc, but yours may be assigned a different address.
- Unmount the drive, or else damage may occur to the drive when running the file check. The command to use is, "umount /dev/sdx" where x is your external drive letter or number determined from parted.
- Run the file check. e2fsck is the command to use. There are several execution options. Check out a man page on it. I use -n -v for a scan. The command in this case is, "e2fsck -n -v /dev/sdx" where x is your external drive letter or number determined from parted.
- If issues are found, re-run e2fsck as needed.
- Reboot the NAS or remount the external drive when completed.

[Norbyte]

What kind of disk do you use for backup?
Long ago there was a Seagate Archive drive (8Tb) in stores but can't find any newer.

Now, I have to use the spare WD RED for backup...

[maxbraketorque]

What kind of disk do you use for backup?
Long ago there was a Seagate Archive drive (8Tb) in stores but can't find any newer.

Now, I have to use the spare WD RED for backup...

I'm using the OWC Elite Pro Dual. Its a very well reviewed hardware RAID enclosure. Switchable between JBOD, sequential, RAID 0, and RAID 1. Has a fan which I consider to be a necessity. I tossed in two 4 TB Reds. My AS6104T wouldn't properly recognize it via the USB 3 interface, but thankfully it did fully recognize it via the eSATA interface.