External HDD Removal Process

Hello,

I have OMV (v5.6.10-1 Usul) installed on my RPI 4. The RPI is connected to 3 HDDs via a powered USB hub:

1. WD 1 TB HDD

2. WD Green 128GB SSD

3. Seagate 4TB External Backup Plus HDD - Powered Drive with it's own power adapter.

The Seagate 4TB drive contains media files (videos) and I only access this drive when I want to watch something on my main PC or TV (connected via LAN to my Router) and other than that I would like to keep this drive powered down. I wanted to ask:

How do I safely remove the Seagate 4TB External HDD without shutting down my RPI 4 before powering the drive down (switching the drive's adapter OFF)? Is there an option on OMV which lets me eject the drive (safely) like you can on Windows? If it cannot be done through OMV UI can I use any command via SSH (Putty) to safely remove this particular drive?

Please help me regarding this.

Thank-you

Quote from Adoby

You unmount the drive. The OMV GUI has that functionality.

However, if you didn't recently write to the drive, and there is no activity, most likely you can be a crazy person and just unplug it.

This is what I do, and in a couple of years, unplugging like a crazy person at least weekly, there has been no issues. USB and EXT4.

Thank-you for your reply.

Yes, I could go about un-plugging the drive but that's a slightly crude solution. I tend to use this drive once in the evening everyday for a couple of hours or little more. I could just keep the drive ON 24/7 but since it's a powered external drive I don't know if I should keep it ON 24/7. This is the drive I'm usinThe black Seagate drive (Seagate Backup Plus Hub 4 Tb External Hard Disk Drive) on the left resting on the cardboard box.

You mentioned in your post that the OMV GUI has the "Unmount" function and I do see the Unmount option under Storage > File Systems for the External drives connected to the RPI but that option is greyed out so I can't use it (please see the screenshot below):



Is the Unmount option available somewhere else on the OMV GUI?

Quote from Agricola

The option is grayed out because the drive is referenced in OMV by one or more services.

The usb backup plugin may be what you are looking for. I have not used it but I understand that you plug it in and it does a backup, and when finished it automatically unmounts the drive.

I don't only backup media on this drive but I also access it in the evenings (almost daily) to watch movies/ shows from like I mentioned.

What I would like to do is this:

- Switch the external drive ON

- Access drive over LAN and watch videos

- After watching videos, remove the drive through OMV GUI

- Turn OFF power to the drive

This above process works seamlessly on Windows but is it possible in OMV? Will the USB Backup Plugin allow me to do this?

Quote from HannesJo

Most likely not because as Agricola already mentioned, you can only unmount unreferenced drives (Drives that are not configured to be in use by any service). So when you say you want to access via LAN, I think you gonna reference it eg in SMB/CIFS. Best you can do is change the power management setting so the drive spins down after a certain time not being used (Perhaps it will do that anyway).

The reason why this works on Windows is that you use your Windows for a PC / Desktop. OMV is a server system. You commonly don't use the OMV GUI daily to use the server, but only to change the configuration, apply updates or check the state.

In the end I have decided to keep the External Seagate drive connected to the RPI 24/7 and just drop the idea of removing the drive. I think the drive spins down after a certain amount of time of not being accessed like you have mentioned in your post so it shouldn't be an issue. I do keep a backup of the drive contents just in case.