G+_John Downey Posted January 20, 2016 Share Posted January 20, 2016 I am using a raspberry pi 2 as a NAS device with two external hard drives. These drives are USB 2.0 and power by an external power supply. They are plugged directly into the raspberry pi. Since they are four years old and getting full I need to replace them. Will a Western Digital 4 TB, USB 3.0 external drive work with a Raspberry PI. I want to be able to plug the drive directly into the PI without using a USB 2.0 HUB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Steve Martin Posted January 20, 2016 Share Posted January 20, 2016 If the USB 3.0 is built correctly in the WD then it should be backwards compatible with the USB 2 on the Pi. Therefore it should work. That said, you won't get the benefit of USB 3 performance, of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted January 20, 2016 Share Posted January 20, 2016 Drive format will be an issue too. I don't think FAT32 will work on 4TB drives, so you'll have to use something else. There's probably NTFS drivers for the Pi, but I'd expect performance hits from that (maybe not). I don't know the limits of EXT3 or other Linux file systems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Steve Martin Posted January 20, 2016 Share Posted January 20, 2016 Ben Reese Good point, although it might be that RaspPi does support NTFS: http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/32890/how-to-mount-ntfs-drive-on-a-raspberry-pi-b However, some reading indicates that there are performance issues, probably mostly because of the USB 2 issue. OTOH I see on my RaspPi that it is using ext4 which would be capable of handling very large volume sizes without issue. Again, just not sure of performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Travis Hershberger Posted January 20, 2016 Share Posted January 20, 2016 Ext4 with a standard 4KiB block size is limited to 16TB. Perfectly fine for people here to use, and something we throw out the window in the enterprise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Keith Mallett Posted January 20, 2016 Share Posted January 20, 2016 I don't see why you would have an issue plugging a USB3 device into the pi, as Steve Martin said they are backwards compatible. However, its over kill and you won't be able to take advantage of the higher communications speed. If you need to buy the WD drive I would suggest saving a bit of cash and buy the USB2 version. If you are getting it free or cheap then don't worry. I think you will be fine. :) Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Keith Mallett Posted January 20, 2016 Share Posted January 20, 2016 Oh - don't buy a USB3 hub though.... https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/usb/README.md Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Black Merc Posted January 20, 2016 Share Posted January 20, 2016 I'd go with +Keith Mallett . But you could buy( or reuse the existing) usb2 HDD cases with new drives inside. Diy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Steve Martin Posted January 20, 2016 Share Posted January 20, 2016 To be honest, I would probably just buy a WD NAS and free up the RaspPi to do something else. No real reason to limit yourself to what the Pi is or is not fully capable of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Heinz Posted January 21, 2016 Share Posted January 21, 2016 No one has mentioned the power drain - if your old hub was providing power to the drives, using a drive without a hub might be too much drain on your wall-wort to power both the drive and the Pi. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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