NTFS-3G Causing High Processor Usage?

[digitalquill]

Hi all

I have a Shevaplug (multi) with Ubuntu. Until recently I have used it as  network proxy and dansguardian filter, however I have just started to use it to control some Samba shares for our Windows 7 Media Centres.

I have a 4 port USB hub plugged into the Sheeva Plug with 2x1tb and 2x2tb hard disks plugged in. Each with a samba share(s).

When I copy media to any of the disks via the network or do a command line copy disk to disk I get very high CPU usage from NTFS-3g. I have read that this was a bug (google shows posts from 2006 time on this subject) but I would have thought this was fixed by now.

I also get Very slow speeds, 2 megs per second, I would have thought this is due to the processor usage?

Is this something specific to the Sheva Plug? Does anyone have an ideas of how to cure this. I know I could use FAT32, but this causes limits on file sizes and as such will be no good for me. Are there any other disk formats that I could use that I can still share with Windows7?

Does anyone have any thoughts?

Thanks

Matt Houldsworth

[digitalquill]

Just an update. I have upgraded NTFS-3g to the latest version from source, but htis makes no difference, however I have also seen that running a 'free -ms1' shows the memory of the Shevaplug going down from 170mb free to 0 as you copy.

Could this be a memory Issue? Increase Swap size? if so how?

[NewIT_James]

Hi digitalquill,

There is a thread on plugcomputer that may be worth reading.

http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=604.0

[digitalquill]

If I use EXT4 format can I still access the Samba shares from windows?

[digitalquill]

Thanks NewIT_James

I created a 2gb swapfile and still the same so must just be the poor NTFS-3g driver

Will try out EXT4 on a spare disk this evening and see if I can create a share on it, not the ideal solution as I have data on the drives which I will have to copy off to other drives before I can format but if that gives better performance then that will be the best solution for the long term.