When I got my Cube a week ago I tried connecting one of my external HDDs via USB A, but that just prompted ZimaOS to want to erase and format the drive. So I can’t even mount external HDDs into Files?
When I tried connecting a two different drives yesterday, via USB A on front and back, and via USB C on front, I didn’t notice anything occur in the Cube this time. No “new drive to format” and no new storage in Files. Has USB also been disabled recently? (Oddly, the LED on the drives didn’t even stay lit, as if they weren’t being powered. The light would flash then turn off.)
This question is semi-related to my question about connecting directly to a computer. But even aside from that, some clarity on “what the Cube does with USB drives” would be helpful.
@timothy If you’re plugging in a common format hard drive, you’ll see it at the bottom left of Files and can manage your files
In the next system version (v1.2.2), there will be an active prompt after the USB is inserted. If the disk format you insert is not common, it may not be recognized. Please let us know to help us improve compatibility @timothy
Where the arrow points is exactly where I expected to find them, but they’re not there.
I believe all of my disks are in APFS. I don’t use anything strange.
On v1.2.0 I remember the disk showing up in the format section, but at that time did not check Files since I was new to ZimaOS and didn’t think to check. But now, neither HDD nor SSD show up, not even in the storage/RAID format section. So I wondered if something changed with v1.2.1?
I’m very sorry for the bad experience, and the first thing that needs to be made clear to you is that there is no loss of your data. You may need a few steps to do a check, 1. check Storage in settings to see if there is a new hard drive and storage space, take a screenshot at your next reply if convenient. 2. you can re-plug the usb to see if there is any change. 3. you can try to reboot to see if the display is normal. Thanks for your feedback.
We took a closer look at ZimaOS and found that the current NTFS and FAT32 USB drives support read and write, but APFS does not support it, the IW team has documented this problem and is looking for a quick way to support it. @timothy
Have you thought about adding a 2.5g Thunderbolt NIC to your mac and using a cat6 cross over cable? You would just need to assign a static IP to the Thunderbolt NIC on your mac and one to the zimacube interface. This should allow you to get some really good speed to do a bulk data transfer.
Might you or someone else be able to help me figure this out?
The NIC is connected to the Cube via Cat6 crossover.
The Cube already found this and gave it an IP, x.178. (I do not see any way to change a static IP. I did make the separate IP for the router a reserved IP.)
This is what Settings is seeing, what do I need to change here? When I SMB to x.178 it wants my Mac’s login and then mounts my own attached harddrives as SMB drives. It’s not accessing the Cube.
Is SMB even the right protocol when using the NIC?
Like someone else just posted about selling their Cube since it can’t connect to Finder, I’m also quite disappointed this was limited to the “Pro” version. It seems like a basic feature and was not something I foresaw being such an issue. Ive never had a NAS before and didn’t know what to look for. With SMB I’ve had some large transfers fail in one way or another or just be so slow, so I’m not sure how I’m supposed to copy 25TB when APFS drives (and also Mac OS Extended drives) still can’t even be connected to the USB ports! (Thus I’m hoping the direct NIC connection speeds things up a bit.)
@ETWang1991 Is there any way to reconfigure the front USB C connection to be able to connect the Cube directly to a computer, like the back USB/TB connection on the Pro?
Is the LAN IP that the Cube offers the one I add to the NIC?
What protocol or address am I supposed to be using in Finder to connect to? SMB? Why’s it just mounting the HDDs attached to my computer instead of linking to the Cube, when I use the Cube’s LAN IP in the NIC?
SMB is one of the suggested ways to use a NAS in daily workflow. We will post more contents about SAMBA/SMB in two weeks.
When you talk about other workflows like media management or AI applications, WebUI may be a better way. Just visit your ZimaCube via http://yourDeviceIP to experience more.
When you talk about “linking” to Cube, you may probably see ZimaCube as a USB peripheral equipment, which is not the case. ZimaCube is a sever instead of a peripheral equipment, in which case connecting to it via network is practical while “linking” may be impossible. The nearest way to fit your purpose may be iSCSI, which may be implemented in the future on ZimaOS.(We are discussing about this.)
Thanks for the insight @Zima-Giorgio, I’ll try the web interface and see how that works.
@MostlyHarmless Can you not elaborate this process more? Online I see how others have used an NIC for their NAS, but it’s usually with a Synology, so I just don’t know which detail I’m missing to make this work.
Static IP is not needed per se… your MBP and the Zimacube need IP addresses on the same network (but not the same IP) which you can identify. Since you are doing a connection via a cross over cable, there will not be anything to give you an IP address.
