[Software] [Solved] Samba doesn't work on ExFAT, but drives make noise when using Ext4

[Vik]

I have 2, 18TB external Seagate hard-drives. When the drives are encrypted with VeraCrypt using Ext4, Samba works perfectly.

The problem with Ext4, the drives spin and tick constantly.

Because of ware and tare, and the noise, I encrypted the drives using ExFAT and now, they are is nice and quite. But no matter what I do, Samba just will not work on ExFat. The symptom is that when I try to access it from Linux or Windows, I get a permission denied.

So noise and ticking on Ext4 with Samba working correctly. Or nice and quite on ExFAT with Samba not working at all. It is a strange problem.

Does anyone have a idea on what I could try? (the behavior on both drives are identical)

[fabien]

Hello, welcome to the forum!

I have 2, 18TB external Seagate hard-drives. [...]

The problem with Ext4, the drives spin and tick constantly.

Did you notice this right after installation (and formatting with the installer)?
I think the installer uses these options:

lazy_itable_init[= <0 to disable, 1 to enable>]
If enabled and the uninit_bg feature is enabled, the inode table will not be fully initialized by mke2fs. This speeds up file system initialization noticeably, but it re‐
quires the kernel to finish initializing the file system in the background when the file system is first mounted. If the option value is omitted, it defaults to 1 to enable
lazy inode table zeroing.

lazy_journal_init[= <0 to disable, 1 to enable>]
If enabled, the journal inode will not be fully zeroed out by mke2fs. This speeds up file system initialization noticeably, but carries some small risk if the system crashes
before the journal has been overwritten entirely one time. If the option value is omitted, it defaults to 1 to enable lazy journal inode zeroing.

and/or

noinit_itable
Do not initialize any uninitialized inode table blocks in the background. This feature may be used by installation CD's so that the install process can complete as quickly as possible;
the inode table initialization process would then be deferred until the next time the file system is mounted.

This means that for a few hours the disks are busy initializing the inode table. This may explain the noise and activity. You can try reformatting to ext4 without these options and see if that fixes the noise issue.

[trinidad]

Perhaps this issue:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... -debian-12

TC

[Vik]

Hey tabien, thank you for the reply. Yes, right after formatting. That spinning and ticking is confusing for less experienced users like myself. I would have never known that Linux simply wasn't done preparing the ext4 partition. I couldn't figure out how to get the other parameters you mentioned to work, so I'm just let it run its course. It is still going (go figure, 18TB). But I don't think I need to wait to confirm before I reply because I did get noinit_itable to quiet the drives down by specifying it in VeryCrypt -> Mount -> Options - Mount Options.

Thanks again.

PS: I like the way it is explained here: https://askubuntu.com/a/402786

[fabien]

I don't think I need to wait to confirm before I reply because I did get noinit_itable to quiet the drives down by specifying it in VeryCrypt -> Mount -> Options - Mount Options.

Great! Thanks for updating your topic. Just mark it as [Solved] by editing the title of your first post when it's totally confirmed. You can also make the title more specific, e.g.
[Solved] Samba doesn't work on ExFAT, but drives make noise when using Ext4

[Vik]

As expected, the activity on the hard drive stopped on its own. This is the easy way if you don't mind noise for 2 or 3 days. The activity on my second drive stopped within 3 hours with the parameter "init_itable=0" without the quotes. In VeraCrypt, it is entered while you mount (Mount -> Options> -> Mount options:)

Complete ext4 partition applied with no noise with full Samba usage.

The information in this post is based on encryption with VeraCrypt but I think it applies to normal un-encrypted use also.

Thank you