Can't free up space on Buffalo Terastation NAS drive

[shmokes]

Subject line basically sums it up.  I have a RAID 5 NAS drive that I have basically filled up.  I only have a couple GB free on it, so I tried deleting a bunch of stuff.  The files I deleted are gone, but it didn't free up any space.  And I've deleted a ton . . . 30 GB at least, probably more like 50 GB.  I've completely shut down the drive and restarted it, files stay gone, but still no more space on the drive.   I've run a scan on the array and a disk check (both are built-in utilities accessible through the web interface).  The drive doesn't support telnet or FTP, so Windows Explorer is really the only way for me to add/remove files. 

Any ideas?  I've deleted plenty of stuff from the device in the past and it worked just fine.  There's no built-in trash can or recycle bin that needs to be emptied.  Normally I just delete something through Windows Explorer and the corresponding space is freed up.  This is killing me.  If I have to format the drives and recreate the array I'm ---fouled up beyond all recognition---.  It's 1.5 terabytes.  There's no place for me to back everything up, so I can't format without losing tons and tons and tons of stuff I don't really want to lose.

[patrickl]

Maybe it's using the emptied space for something else (backups or something)? Also, are you really really sure that you disabled the trashbox option?

BTW Even when using RAID, you still need to make backups.

[shmokes]

When I have more money I'll make backups.  For now I'll just take my chances.  It's just my media server, so if it dies I'll lose tons and tons and tons of media, most of which I ripped illegally.  Easy come easy go. 


And thanks   I didn't even know about the trashbox.  I guess I haven't ever actually deleted anything off this server after all.     Problem solved.   

[Donkey_Kong]

Man I had the worst luck with my Terastation. I actually lost quite a few family pictures and video that I had put on it thinking that there was no way I would ever lose it because of that whole raid thinger...turns out it was the only time that I had ever lost anything like that. My terastation had a major hardware failure and luckily I was within my 1 year warranty still. I did have to pepper support with a few dozen emails to actually get them to replace it, but they finally did (I then immediately sold it on ebay)! I now use regular simple external hard drives to backup pictures, etc. I have had a 250gig Lacie firewire that has served me well for around 4 years. Then a week or so after selling the terastation on ebay for $700, I bought another Lacie 1TB for just $135, shipped from buy.com.

The terastation networking features were cool. Just don't put your 100% faith in the mirroring, raid etc. Especially if you are storing any valuable data. Backup the backup!  Hopefully you have better luck than I did. For now I'm happy with simple dual external HD's.

[SavannahLion]

The place I work at has a collectoin

The terastation networking features were cool. Just don't put your 100% faith in the mirroring, raid etc. Especially if you are storing any valuable data. Backup the backup!  Hopefully you have better luck than I did. For now I'm happy with simple dual external HD's.

I've got a similar setup. A pair of 500GB drives and a 300GB drive. They're more or less external with swaps between an enclosure or an ATA to USB adapter.

It works out OK, but I always have this concern in the back of my mind that one of the kids is going to discover my HDD stash and start using them like this: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdD9ypqoBk4[/youtube].

A NAS would serve my future needs better anyways.