USBbackup: mounted NTFS backup drive not shown under 'file systems'

  • I am using 'USBbackup' for several years now to backup my data to USB drives regularly. These USB drives are formatted with NTFS for accessability from Windows PC. 'USBbackup' mounts these drives at start of the backup process, and unmounts them once it is finished. With OMV 5 I used to check the status of the backup just by checking, if the backup drive was still mounted.


    With OMV 6 this is not possible, since the NTFS drive (mounted by 'USBbackup') is not shown in files systems! The following two snapshots illustrate, that the drive is properly mounted ('lsblk'), but not shown under 'file systems':



    I believe, this is a bug, since NTFS is a supported file system (and it works in my case without problems), and should be shown under 'file systems' as well, once the disk is mounted.


    Or did I miss something?


    LittleAlf

    SW: Debian 11 | Kernel 5.0.10 | Root / on BTRFS | OMV 6

    HW: Fujitsu D3644-B | Core i3-8100 | 32 GB RAM | 1 TB Samsung 860 EVO

    • Official Post

    This is not a bug. In OMV6 the UI does not show existing and mounted file systems anymore that are not permanently under control of OMV. This is by intention to have the same UI experience and behaviour across the whole UI which is that only configurations are displayed and no live data anymore. The dashboard widgets must be used for that instead.

  • votdev

    Added the Label resolved
  • This is not a bug. In OMV6 the UI does not show existing and mounted file systems anymore that are not permanently under control of OMV. This is by intention to have the same UI experience and behaviour across the whole UI which is that only configurations are displayed and no live data anymore. The dashboard widgets must be used for that instead.

    Then how to backup a shared folder from OMV to an external NTFS formatted USB HDD using "USB-Backup"? or do I have to format the external USB HDD to EXT4 file system? I want to avoid that as I want to be able to use this HDD on windows11 system to view files.

    OMV 7.4.9-2 (Sandworm) on ASROCK B560M-ITX/ac Motherboard, 16GB DDR4 RAM, Intel Pentium Gold 6405 CPU, Silverstone ECS06 6 Ports SATA Gen3x2 (6Gbps) Non-RAID PCI-e card, 7(2Parity+5Data) Toshiba 2.5 inch Laptop SATA HDD's 1TB each for Data, SnapRaid with MergerFS plugin, Kingston USB-3 Data Traveler Exodia DTX/32 GB Pen Drive for Root/OS, 128GB SATA SSD for use by DOCKER and spare 128 GB PCIE M.2 SSD. Motherboard has 4 native SATA ports and 1 M.2 PCIE port. SilverStone Sugo SG13 Case.

    • Official Post

    Then how to backup a shared folder from OMV to an external NTFS formatted USB HDD using "USB-Backup"?

    Create a job in the GUI of the USB-Backup plugin. There you should be able to select the filesystem on the USB connected drive as source or target after mounting the filesystem. After the jobs are created, unmount the filesystem.



    Later when you do the backup, just plug the drive in, wait and unplug. OMV will mount and unmount the filesystem automatically.

  • Create a job in the GUI of the USB-Backup plugin. There you should be able to select the filesystem on the USB connected drive as source or target after mounting the filesystem. After the jobs are created, unmount the filesystem.

    What am I doing Wrong?


    Here is the mounted NTFS usb drive:



    Here is the USB-Backup GUI giving me other drives

    but not the NTFS usb drive:


    OMV 7.4.9-2 (Sandworm) on ASROCK B560M-ITX/ac Motherboard, 16GB DDR4 RAM, Intel Pentium Gold 6405 CPU, Silverstone ECS06 6 Ports SATA Gen3x2 (6Gbps) Non-RAID PCI-e card, 7(2Parity+5Data) Toshiba 2.5 inch Laptop SATA HDD's 1TB each for Data, SnapRaid with MergerFS plugin, Kingston USB-3 Data Traveler Exodia DTX/32 GB Pen Drive for Root/OS, 128GB SATA SSD for use by DOCKER and spare 128 GB PCIE M.2 SSD. Motherboard has 4 native SATA ports and 1 M.2 PCIE port. SilverStone Sugo SG13 Case.

    • Official Post

    I think the problem is, that there are at least two partitions on that drive.

    AFAIK the plugin is expecting only one partition on the drive.


    EDIT:

    Duplicating the system disk in the USB Backup plugin OMV6 · Issue #1161 · openmediavault/openmediavault
    Hello, I am using the latest OMV 6. In the USB Backup plugin settings, I see a duplication of my system disk. Can you check this error only with me or not?…
    github.com

  • I think the problem is, that there are at least two partitions on that drive.

    AFAIK the plugin is expecting only one partition on the drive.

    I think you may be right. I'm going to try and reformat this drive on windows11 system.


    Or


    based on your experience should I just reformat it to EXT4 for ease of use and not worry about having to open this drove on windows PC?

    OMV 7.4.9-2 (Sandworm) on ASROCK B560M-ITX/ac Motherboard, 16GB DDR4 RAM, Intel Pentium Gold 6405 CPU, Silverstone ECS06 6 Ports SATA Gen3x2 (6Gbps) Non-RAID PCI-e card, 7(2Parity+5Data) Toshiba 2.5 inch Laptop SATA HDD's 1TB each for Data, SnapRaid with MergerFS plugin, Kingston USB-3 Data Traveler Exodia DTX/32 GB Pen Drive for Root/OS, 128GB SATA SSD for use by DOCKER and spare 128 GB PCIE M.2 SSD. Motherboard has 4 native SATA ports and 1 M.2 PCIE port. SilverStone Sugo SG13 Case.

    • Official Post

    I am using ext4 on the drive I use with the plugin.


    If you ever need to access the data from windows machine, you can either install some software on Windows to read ext4, or just boot a live linux distro.

  • I think the problem is, that there are at least two partitions on that drive.

    AFAIK the plugin is expecting only one partition on the drive.

    As you suspected there are two partitions on this drive and I tried wiping and reformatting it with NTFS but I still get two partitions Sdj1 and Sdj2. Sdj1 in particular is very irritating with size of 14M and I'm not sure how to get rid of it in windows NTFS formating. So I have wiped the drive and converted it to Ext4 now I can schedule a USB-Backup job.

    OMV 7.4.9-2 (Sandworm) on ASROCK B560M-ITX/ac Motherboard, 16GB DDR4 RAM, Intel Pentium Gold 6405 CPU, Silverstone ECS06 6 Ports SATA Gen3x2 (6Gbps) Non-RAID PCI-e card, 7(2Parity+5Data) Toshiba 2.5 inch Laptop SATA HDD's 1TB each for Data, SnapRaid with MergerFS plugin, Kingston USB-3 Data Traveler Exodia DTX/32 GB Pen Drive for Root/OS, 128GB SATA SSD for use by DOCKER and spare 128 GB PCIE M.2 SSD. Motherboard has 4 native SATA ports and 1 M.2 PCIE port. SilverStone Sugo SG13 Case.

  • Thanks for sharing :thumbup:

    No Problem, Hopefully this info will help someone else down the road.


    Also, I would like to report success in backing-up to NTFS format USB HDD. All I had to do was first format the USB drive to EXT4 system, then haul it back to Windows11 system, use windows "diskpart" utility on windows CLI terminal to delete the latest EXT4 system I created, then use windows "disk manager utility" to create a new volume. Now it only has one partition and "USB Backup" plug-in sees the drive.

    OMV 7.4.9-2 (Sandworm) on ASROCK B560M-ITX/ac Motherboard, 16GB DDR4 RAM, Intel Pentium Gold 6405 CPU, Silverstone ECS06 6 Ports SATA Gen3x2 (6Gbps) Non-RAID PCI-e card, 7(2Parity+5Data) Toshiba 2.5 inch Laptop SATA HDD's 1TB each for Data, SnapRaid with MergerFS plugin, Kingston USB-3 Data Traveler Exodia DTX/32 GB Pen Drive for Root/OS, 128GB SATA SSD for use by DOCKER and spare 128 GB PCIE M.2 SSD. Motherboard has 4 native SATA ports and 1 M.2 PCIE port. SilverStone Sugo SG13 Case.

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