Woking with Disk Devices

Disk Devices provide the underlying storage for SoftNAS and Storage Pools. Disk devices are attached to SoftNAS at the virtualization platform layer, often as virtual hard disks (e.g., VMDK in VMware, VHD in Hyper-V, EBS volumes in EC2).

When a new disk device is attached, it starts out in a raw, unpartitioned state. Before it can be used, the disk device must be partitioned.

Disk Device Grid

The Disk Devices Grid displays the list of all available disk devices in a tabular grid format. It has the following fields.

Field	Description
Disk Name	It is the name of the disk device. You can click this name of a volume in the list to select it.
Total Size	It shows the total size of the disk device.
Make and Model	It shows the details of the model of the disk device.
Partitions	It shows the number of partitiions available in the disk device.
Actions	It shows the set of actions to be performed on the disk device. It has actions such as SMART Status and Identify Drive.

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Configuring Disk Devices Module

Configuring module is easy. Simply follow the steps given below.

1. Click the Module Config button.

The Configuration for Module Partitions on Local Disks will be displayed.

2. Select the Partition Management Command. The available options include Fdisk, Parted and Choose automatically.

3. Select the Default Partition Table Format. The available options include MSDOS and GPT.

4. Click the Save button.

The changes to the configuration module will be updated.

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Partitioning a Disk

Partitioning a disk device is very easy. Simply follow the steps given below.

Note: If you are installing for the first time, all of your disk devices will show no partitions (except SCSI device A, which has the 30 GB disk that SoftNAS was installed on).

1. Click the name of the unpartitioned raw disk.

The Edit Disk Partitions section will be displayed.

2. Click the Add Primary Partition link.

The Create Partition section will be displayed.

3. The Location Type specifies the partition type setting. Retain the selection of default value, GPT in the Location Type drop down list.

4. By default, the device will be partitioned with a single, large partition.

5. Click the Create button.

The disk will now be partitioned and ready to be used for creating storage pools.

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SMART Status

You can view the SMART Status of a disk drive.

1. Click the SMART Status option in the Actions column of the disk drive.

The SMART Drive Status of the selected drive will be displayed. It shows the details of location, make and model and drive size. It also shows whether the disk is SMART enabled and support SMART.