Overview

Overview

The Disk Manager is a simple but powerful tool that helps you manage disks and partition your NAS.

Only the admin user can access this application.

Some services depend on the drives. You may need to re-login after the disk settings have been changed.
In most conditions, users should not configure the disks manually. The Installation Wizard will create partitions, RAIDs and mount devices automatically. The user only needs to plug in the disks.
All disk configurations can take a long time. Please refresh the page every once in a while. Do not make any other changes to the disks while waiting for your configurations to take effect.

Auto Create a Data Disk

If the user is not familiar with disk and partition operations, the Disk Manager provides an automatic tool to help set up the disks and partitions.

Click the Installation Wizard tab.
Click the Auto button.

The wizard will automatically do the tasks below:

Deactivate all internal disks.
Automatically create RAID set if two or more internal disks are available.
Partition and format disks.
Automatically mount partitions as home directory.

Disk Information

Select a disk from the device list, the basic information and the partitions map will be displayed in the information area, and the partitions map.

The following table identifies the fields and buttons shown on the disk information page.

Field	Detail
Model	The model of the disk
Path	The full path of the disk in the operating system
Total Capacity	The total capacity of the disk
Connection Type	The type of connection
Cylinder	The number of magnetic tracks on the disk
Head	The number of magnetic heads as well as plates
Sector	The number of sectors in one track
Sector Size	The number of bytes that one sector contains
Erase	When the disk is not in use, the Erase button will appear.

SMART Information

S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology; also written as SMART) is a monitoring system for computer hard disks to detect and report on various indicators of reliability.

If the disk supports SMART, then the SMART Info button can be used. Select the disk and click the button, the information will pop up in a new window.

The information displayed may differ with different disk models and manufacturers.

Partition Information

Select a partition in the device list or partition map, the basic information of the partition will be displayed in the information area.

The following table identifies the fields and buttons shown in the partition information page.

Field	Detail
Label	The label to distinguish the volume
Path	The full path of the partition in the operating system
Mount Point	The path that the volume was mounted to
Capacity	The capacity of the partition
File System	The file system of the volume
Type	The partition type (primary, extended or logic) of the partition
Flag	The flag of the partition.
Delete	When the disk is not in use, a Delete button will appear.

Erasing a Disk

To erase a disk, you can:

Select a disk in the device list.
Click the Erase Device button on the toolbar or the Erase button in the information area.

If a disk is in use, you cannot erase it.

Erasing a disk means cleaning up all the existing partitions and data. The partitions and data will all be deleted.

Creating a Partition

When a disk is blank or has free space to use, new partitions can be created on the disk.

Select the partition in the device list or the blank space in the partition map.
Choose the partition type and set the sector number of the partition.
Then click the Create button.

The following table describes the fields and buttons shown in the creating a new partition page.

Field	Detail
Partition Type	The type of the object partition. It can be primary, extended or logic.
Sector Number	The number of sectors that the object partition contains.
Create	Clicks it to start creating a partition.

There can be primary partitions, extended partitions and logic partitions on a disk. The maximum number of primary partitions plus extended partitions is four. Extended partitions may contain several logic partitions. The steps to set up partitions on a disk are: setup primary partitions → setup extended partitions → setup logic partitions → activate primary partitions → format all the partitions

Delete a Partition

To delete a partition not in use, follow the steps below:

Select the partition you wish to delete in the partition map or in the device list.
Click the Delete Partition button on the toolbar or the Delete button in the information area.

To delete an extended partition, you should select the partition in the partition list instead of the partition map.

Formatting a Partition

Newly created partition cannot be used before being formatted to a certain file system.

To format a partition, you can:

select a partition in the device list or partition map
Click the Format Partition button on the toolbar.
Set the label and choose a file system.
Click Format button and the selected partition will be formatted.

You need to refresh the page manually to check if the formatting operation was successful.

Mount a Partition

Partitions cannot be read or written before the operating system has access to them. Thus partitions should be mounted to the operating system.

Select a partition in the device list or partition map
Click the Mount Partition button on the toolbar
Set the mount point (Check Mount as HOME if you want to mount partition to home directory)
Click the Mount button.

Unmount a Partition

To unmount a partition:

Select a partition in the device list or partition map.
Click the Unmount Partition button on the toolbar.

Setup a RAID Array

To build a RAID array, follow the steps below:

Click the RAID tab.
Drag the partitions or disks from the device list to the RAID table. If you want to remove items in the RAID list, click the delete button in front of the item or click the Clear button to remove all items.
Select a RAID type in the combo box.
Click Create to build up the RAID.

The RAID Info Panel below the RAID List shows the RAID information of the disk.

The following table describes the RAID types supported by Disk Manager.

Type	Description
BIG	Concatenate the partitions to make a single virtual disk with larger volume
RAID 0	Block-level striping without parity or mirroring.
RAID 1	Mirroring without parity or striping.
RAID 4	Block-level striping with dedicated parity
RAID 5	Block-level striping with distributed parity.
RAID 6	Block-level striping with double distributed parity.
RAID 10	Combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0. A stripe of mirrors

After a RAID is created, it needs to be formated. Follow the steps to format a RAID:

Click the RAID in the device list
Click the partition of the RAID in the partition map
Click Format in the information area or the Format Partition button in the toolbar

Wait until the partition is formatted successfully.

Destroy a RAID Array

To destroy a RAID array follow the steps bellow:

Select the RAID device from the device list
Click the RAID tab.
Click the Destroy button.

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