Managing Drives
The Drive Management feature provides settings for managing storage and lets you apply global settings
for drives on your px4-400d Network Storage. The Drive Management feature also enables you to
Write Caching
Write Caching is a global setting that applies to all drives in your px4-400d. To set the disk write caching
value, click the Settings icon and select an option from the drop-down menu. The settings options are
Always disabled, Enabled with UPS, or Always enabled.
Enabling Disk Write Caching is not the same as creating an SSD Cache. See
for information on how to create and use an SSD Cache.
Understanding Disk Write Caching
Write caching is a mechanism that attempts to separate the fast processing speed of the px4-400d from
the relatively slow mechanics of actually writing data to drive.
When write caching is disabled, every write to drive causes the px4-400d to wait while the data is written
to drive, which can slow performance. When write caching is enabled and the px4-400d sends a write
request to the drive, it writes the data to cache (which is much faster) and sends an immediate
acknowledgment to the px4-400d saying the write is complete. The system proceeds without waiting for
the data to actually get written to drive, which occurs in the background.
While write caching does improve performance, there are some risks. The system responds that the data
is written to drive when in fact it has only been written to cache. Should the px4-400d lose power, any data
not completely written to drive is lost forever.
This is because cache memory is volatile. If you lose power, the contents of the cache are lost. Therefore,
if there were any pending writes in the cache that were not written to the drive, they will be lost forever.
Using a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) can mitigate the risk associated with write caching, which is
why it is recommended to only enable this feature when a UPS is connected.
Global Drive Management Settings
1. Click
Settings to access the global drive management settings available on your px4-400d.
2. Select the link Perform an offline file system check then reboot if any of the following
conditions exist on your px4-400d:
○
Data is unavailable
○
Data is missing after an unclean shutdown
○
You are concerned about the integrity of the file system
This option will take the volume offline for some time. The check could take up to several hours,
depending on the size of the volume and other factors. During the check, data will be
inaccessible. When the check is completed, it will reboot the device.
3. Select a value for Disk Write Caching. See
Understanding Disk Write Cachin
g for more
information on the options.
Drive Management
72
Managing Drives
Summary of Contents for px4-400d
Page 1: ...px4 400d Network Storage with LifeLine 4 1 User Guide ...
Page 11: ...Setting up Your px4 400d Network Storage Setting up Your px4 400d Network Storage 1 CHAPTER 1 ...
Page 24: ...Setting up Your px4 400d Network Storage 14 Device Setup ...
Page 25: ...Device Configuration Options Device Configuration Options 15 CHAPTER 2 ...
Page 46: ...Users and Groups Users and Groups 36 CHAPTER 4 ...
Page 54: ...Using Active Directory Domain Using Active Directory Domain 44 CHAPTER 5 ...
Page 60: ...Sharing Files Sharing Files 50 CHAPTER 6 ...
Page 81: ...Drive Management Drive Management 71 CHAPTER 7 ...
Page 86: ...Storage Pool Management Storage Pool Management 76 CHAPTER 8 ...
Page 103: ...Backing up and Restoring Your Content Backing up and Restoring Your Content 93 CHAPTER 10 ...
Page 127: ...Sharing Content Using Social Media Sharing Content Using Social Media 117 CHAPTER 12 ...
Page 133: ...Media Management Media Management 123 CHAPTER 13 ...
Page 152: ...Hardware Management Hardware Management 142 CHAPTER 16 ...
Page 159: ...Additional Support Additional Support 149 CHAPTER 17 ...
Page 162: ...Legal Legal 152 CHAPTER 18 ...