My old legacy went bonkers, so I got a gen 4. I was still clearing shows off the old one, so I connected a new drive to the gen 4. Now that I’ve gotten all shows off the legacy, I’d like to reuse the drive with windows. I seem to remember someone wanting to do this, but can’t find the post. Any direction would be appreciated, thanks!
There’s not really a trick to it. Just plug it in and format it for Windows.
Not sure what filesystem they use on gen4, but if it’s a Linux based filesystem, by default, Windows won’t touch it for reformatting. You’ll need to remove the partition (or other) to trick Windows into thinking it’s “fresh” and ready for use. I don’t think there’s any sort of override that can be done in a normal attempt at format case.
Go into Disk Management, you’ll be able to delete the “foreign” partition. Then create a new partition and format. BE CAREFUL TO SELECT THE CORRECT DRIVE!
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I recently asked this question of Support and they said Tablo uses EXT4. They also said it’s best to use a 1 TB or larger drive from their recommended list. You should be able to just plug it in, as @Michael_Allbritton said above, and it’ll reformat to EXT4 and start working.
Yeah, I was thinking of someone trying to use the disk in windows… nevermind.
I have bad luck with Tablo hard drive formatting. I used Legacy with hard drive worked well for several years and suddenly. Tablo legacy cannot recognize it. Hard drive was connected and Tablo says “no storage connected”. I have to reboot to factory setting and made it work for another while; then failed again. I have tried 3 different hard drives Toshiba 250 GB, Seagate 2 TB, V-NAND SSD 4 TB. All three worked well with PC. I re-format all three multiple times and try to connect legacy; Legacy of course, required an initial formatting. The formatting process last hours without finishing on all hard drives. I contacted Tablo tech support with no results.
I threw away legacy and ordered gen 4th. Unfortunately, it happens again. I used USB connect gen 4th as external hard drive. I tried all three. Gen 4th will format and format with no ending. Eventually formatting process quit and showing “no storage” connected.
Should I find a Linux PC or laptop (I don’t have one) to formate my three drives into Ext4 myself? Any ideas? Thank you!
The only thing that has ever worked for me is to format the drive to NTFS on my pc then connect it to Tablo and let the Tablo format it to Ext4.
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You can download Ubuntu Linux to a flash drive. Then you can boot your computer from the flash drive and run Linux on your computer without making any permanent changes to your computer. You could format the drive that way. Might be worth a try.
If you have tried multiple drives, I question whether the drive controller in the Tablo is bad. There are some preferred/recommended drives, but it should take most drives between 1TB and 8TB.