Ultra 6 With 2 3TB Drives But no Redundancy

[mearglen]

Hi Folks

Spent nearly 2 days on this and getting nowhere any help therefore much appreciated

I've an Ultra 6 (firmware 4.2.19) I install the first drive a 3TB Hitachi HDS723030ALA640 it's seen tested and I'm prompted to run Raidar where i define it as X-raid2 all seem to go smoothly.

I then add a second identical drive which I'd have expected to be asigned as redundant. It is seen and tested (very quickly), but when I look at it in Raidar under Volumes I get the following:

RAID Configuration

Configuration: RAID Level X-RAID2, Single disk
Status: Unprotected. A disk failure will render this volume dead.

RAID Disks:

Ch 1 : Hitachi HDS723030ALA640 [2794 GB]
2790 GB allocated

Available Disks:
Ch 2 : Hitachi HDS723030ALA640 [2794 GB] 2790 GB free


How to I configure the second (available drive) to provide redundancy?

Thanks

Pete

[mdgm]

Can you try refreshing that page and if you still don't see any progress try a reboot?

[mearglen]

Hi thanks for responding so quickly

A refresh did nothing, so I tried a power down and reboot from Raidar, nothing happened (noticed that display on NAS was now blank). Powered off and back on from pushbutton. NAS quickly powered up but only display "ReadyNAS" on display and didn't boot, not visible from Raidar either.

Took out second drive and NAS rebooted correctly.
Put second drive in PC and it was identified OK

Any other ideas I'm desperate and cannot risk putting data back on to this until I can be certain I've some level of redundancy

Pete

[mearglen]

Quick follow up put 2nd drive back in it was identified and tested in 1-2 minutes max I noticed that shortly after the display on the NAS went blank

Both drives can now be seen but again the first is shown as X-Raid2 whilst the second is again only shown as "Available" if I go to the NAS with exploere I can onlty see capacity from the first drive

Don't know if this helps any

Pete

[mdgm]

You have no data on the unit?

If so I'd suggest a factory default (e.g. via System > Update > Factory Default) to wipe the disks and get a clean setup on the latest firmware.

Please note that RAID is not a replacement for backup. If you store important data primarily on the ReadyNAS you should backup that data regularly e.g. to another ReadyNAS, a USB disk, the cloud or some place else.

[mearglen]

Really not looking good it will not factory reset with 2 drives installed (locks up as the NAS is rebooting) but I've tried with each drive sperately and I can factory reset OK
Both drives appear OK in my PC (Win 7 Ultimate [64 bit]

[mdgm]

Suggest you contact NetGear tech support. If new purchase you may need to return the unit to your reseller in exchange for a new one.

[mearglen]

Tried contacting Netgear but the inital response clearly indicated they didn't understand my problem and so didn't bother persuing that route.

But to answer my own question and assist others that may have the same problem, solution is:

Put the drives in your PC and do a full format (not a quick format) before installing.

Mine were brand new straight out of the box but 4 days of pratting about got me nowhere till I tried a full format it worked full time

Hope this helps others

Now back to the grindstone just how do I speed up copying from over from my NV+ to my Ultra must be able to get better than 11.3MBs

Hey Ho off we go again......

Pete

[mdgm]

NAS has to format drives. So deleting the partitions on them before adding them to the NAS would be best rather than formatting them.

What protocol are you using?

Use NFS not CIFS.

[mearglen]

Problem resolved but working with these large drives takes a very very long time am now confinced that I should have got an Ultra 6 plus which I assume would have handled restriping and expasion in a more timely manner.

Never mind system up and running 4 * 3Tb with dual redundancy and disk 5 half way through expansion. Think we're there

Pete