Allow USB hard-drive or stick to be formated with Reliance NITRO instead of FAT

[QFang]

As far as I know, a thumb-drive or hdd that you connect to a cRIO USB port has to be formated using FAT. It would be very handy if NI would support attaching drives formated with the Reliance NITRO file-format. This could in some cases also lessen the pain of being stuck with Reliance (old version) on the cRIO main drive. It would also ensure deterministic file IO on the USB drives in case of power failure, un-expected device disconnection etc.

Thanks for reading and hope for your vote!

QFang 

[Tanya_V]

Hi QFang,

We could use some more information on how you would use this feature and what it would add to your current application. What problems have you had with the current Reliance implementation on the cRIO internal disk? How is the removable storage used in your application and does it ever need to be mounted to a Windows PC?

Thanks!

Tanya

LabVIEW Platform Product Support Engineer

[QFang]

Hi Tanya,

The current problems I have with Reliance on the cRIO is a little besides the point for this idea, but they include: slow performance if any folder has 100 files or more, performance loss for files over ~50kB in size.

The removable storage the way it currently is used is only for log file transfer from non-networked cRIO's back to corporate Windows machines where labVIEW code will import the contents of the stick to a database. The benefit of Reliance NITRO in this case is limited, but if we assume a USB drive could be mounted to both windows and cRIO with a Reliance NITRO file system, its use could be expanded to direct logging of files to the thumbdrive (instead of copying off of the cRIO drive), configuration management etc. because the risk of data loss or corruption in the case of an unexpected power loss or dismount event would be next to nil.

[dfousek]

Hi Tanya !!

I really support QFang's idea.

I have the same problems with USB sticks (FAT32-formatted), as the application I wrote (for a cRIO-9076 situated on a rotating part of a wind turbine), wirelessly transmits my waveforms to a PC, but when the transmission breaks, then the waveforms are stored on the USB. In that case, QFang describes perfectly the issues I am facing...

Regards,

Dimitri

[QFang]

Apparantly, NI is expressing that this solution would be preferred as well in this thread. I will post a reply in that thread to link them to this idea.. maybe we can get some more votes!

NI reply to USB storage issue thread

[QFang]

This is still relevant, but with the 'expanded' scope of allowing targets with SD card slots (such as sbRIO's) to mount NITRO cards.

At this point I'd settle for the old Reliance.

I do not agree with NI's oppinion (stated elsewere) that the Linux file systems currently supported out of the box are 'just as safe' as the Reliance / NITRO file systems, because they are not. That said, I don't think this will ever happen (via NI) because my guess is they left the Reliance system due to licensing cost disputes or something along those lines.