Read exFat to copy/paste data faster

[Odissine]

Hello !
I saw several messages who explain that there is no way to use USB External Drive formated in ExFat ...
My need is only to have access to this Drive in ReadOnly just to copy faster some data from this drive to my Media drive (into TrueNas)
Copy past 2To from network is very very long (more than 1 days ... don't know why but speed fro tranfser is arround 2Mo/s max in local environnement !

So I need to find another solution !

Is there a plugin, a shell command just to mount exFat drive in readonly ?
Can I shutdown server, connect one drive from Nas to another PC (on linux) and use it to copy past data ?

I just made a fresh install for TrueNas to use Plex on it ... If no solution is found maybe i'll try OpenMediaVault instead :(

Thanks for your help !

 

[Melodious Funk]

Odissine,​

I have the same questions and I'm surprised by the lack of current conversation on this. It's been asked dozens of times over years on this and many other forums. Your thread viewed 112 times in two week...hasn't generated a reply.

Seems like one of the most common use cases for moving data into a new NAS. How many users have abandoned TrueNAS because of this missing feature?

Good luck,
Melodious

 

[Arwen]

To quote my Linux distro's support wiki;

The availability of the exFAT filesystem had long been poor, because of its proprietary, unpublished specification. The situation, however, was improved after release of Linux kernel 5.7 with native exFAT driver implementation.

Yes, it would be nice to import a general purpose file system's data. But, in the case of TrueNAS Core, exFAT would have to work with FreeBSD.

In the case of TrueNAS SCALE, they are removing the ability to import external file systems, (if I remember correctly), going forward. It is probably a support issue, but don't quote me, I have not followed that issue much.

Perhaps using a VM, (MS-Windows or Linux), may work with a passed through USB drive. Then either assign the VM a path to the proper Dataset. Or even SMB would probably be faster than 1Gbps Ethernet.

We almost need a Resource on the subject. But, this is not something I would use or need. So, I have zero knowledge or incentive to test & write one.


Yes, I would expect anyone who looks at TrueNAS, (Core or SCALE), and finds that it lacks a desirable to find something else. Their is no one perfect NAS out their. Far too many people have different requirements to make one Open Source software NAS work for everyone. For example, we get people about twice a year wanting to run TrueNAS on ARM CPUs because the user found a "neat" ARM single board computer that they want to turn into a NAS.

 

[AlexGG]

The availability of the exFAT filesystem had long been poor, because of its proprietary, unpublished specification.

The specification is (currently) at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/exfat-specification, and it has been available for years, so you may want to correct that statement. Maybe there are licensing issues that I am not aware of, but it is not the lack of a published specification.

 

[Arwen]

The availability of the exFAT filesystem had long been poor, because of its proprietary, unpublished specification.

The specification is (currently) at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/exfat-specification, and it has been available for years, so you may want to correct that statement. Maybe there are licensing issues that I am not aware of, but it is not the lack of a published specification.

Their are a great many people still running older Linux kernels than 5.7. Further, that statement probably was quite true for many years, as exFAT is now old. Here is the first line from Wikipedia on exFAT;

exFAT (Extensible File Allocation Table) is a file system introduced by Microsoft in 2006
...

As for updating that Distro's info on exFAT, the statement still stands. Note the word "had", meaning past tense. So, I consider it more of a history of why it was not immediately adopted by Linux, (and other Open Source OS), users.

But, your point is well taken, it should be well supported today.


However, if I remember correctly, (and please do your own research before quoting me), one reason iX is choosing to drop foreign file system import is that ownership, permissions and ACLs become problematic. Copying with the proper protocol, SMB or NFS, implies proper ownership, permissions and ACLs.