Hi all,

This topic is covered in a number of posts across the net in various iterations, but I think my situation is somewhat unique. Before I posted the question, I wanted to emphasize that I have done research, and that I'm not just posting without putting in the time.

I built a custom NAS based off of CentOS 6. I have a couple CIFS shares created on my data volume, and we use one of them as our home "shared drive" where we store photos, music, and movies. However, these shares can't be indexed in Windows 7/8 because they are formatted using EXT4. My plan was to create a new logical volume and format it using NTFS so that the new share could be indexed in Windows. The ultimate goal is to change my library locations on our computers (e.g. change the location of the Music library to the mapped drive).

To start, I have 2 questions:

1. Is this a good/recommended approach?
2. What is the recommended way to format the volume? I have info about adding the EPEL repo to install NTFS-3G for formatting, but I would like to know if someone has done this or other methods, see what others have experienced, etc.

I have included what I think is the relevant information, but if I missed something relevant, please let me know.

Thanks in advance,
Dave

Not unique at all. It is because the share is a network drive versus the file system format. Windows 7/8 can not index network drives.

I found several threads but have no idea if it works.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...e-f84df3ae091b
http://community.spiceworks.com/topi...-network-drive

I got to agree on this one. On a Microsoft network each individual server indexes its own drives since each individual server must be the one to actually locate the file upon a search request. The indexing function is proprietary to Microsoft, however there us a similar service native to Linux.

updatedb(8) - Linux man page
http://linux.die.net/man/8/updatedb

locate(1) - Linux man page
http://linux.die.net/man/1/locate

While I have never seen or heard of such ever being used, I managed to find a Microsoft article on this subject:

Invoke-Locate: PowerShell port of GNU findutils' locate and updatedb
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.co...Shell-0aa2673a

Thanks for the replies, folks. It didn't occur to me that the broader issue was the removal of the ability to index a mapped drive. This is important enough to me that I will continue to search for a workaround or something.

I'm wondering if anyone on the forums uses network storage in a fashion similar to what I'm attempting and has found a better way to implement said solution.

Cheers,
Dave