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524X Can't factory reset, help
Using 524X with firmware 6.10.9 Finally had a disk fail. the disk test option from front view reporting error, but no reasons given, smart status wasn't showing errors. well I tried to re...
Are you sure you did a factory default, not an OS reinstall the first time?
You can't put 2 drives into a RAID5 configuration, so it sounds like that reset went as it should. The NAS will convert it to RAID5 when you put in the third drive. You should hot-insert that third drive and format it, after which the NAS should add it to the array (assuming you chose XRAID).
yes I'm sure I did factory reset.
I did a lot of different things trying to get this working so its a little murky now what all I have tried, but I have tried factory reset numerous times including with all three disks and with only two disks.
I first did it with 3 disks inside after having done a boot menu disk test to discover disk#4 had errors and I removed it..
but it failed to reset with the remaining three drives, gave me an error message on the front of the readynas and in raidar a message about corrupt root. I did googling and found out this is normal, readynasOS is designed to not overwrite it if you have one or more other volumes, it will not erase the new third one if it thinks there might be some old valid data on it....ie...detects a root or detects certain partition or something like that.
I tried to also factory reset only with disk#3 and it also failed.
At some point I did it with only first two disks and that worked.
when I try to put disk 3 back in, it complains that in order to use it I must remove the first two "inactive" disks. I don't want to use it, I want to erase it. but readynas will not erase it or reset it.
I have already tried numerous times to DESTROY all known volumes and FORMAT each of the disks... but ultimately this third disk keeps coming back with a status that there is an old 16TB volume associated with it and does not want to be reset or erased.
but it failed to reset with the remaining three drives, gave me an error message on the front of the readynas and in raidar a message about corrupt root.
The factory reset reformats the disk and recreates the root. So either that process failed, or you accidentally did an OS reinstall.
when I try to put disk 3 back in, it complains that in order to use it I must remove the first two "inactive" disks.
No harm in removing them, since your goal is to reformat everything anyway. Then you can go to system->settings and do the factory default from there.
100% confidence I did not do reinstall. I did factory reset and I have done it now about five times. In this case it is absolutely NOT erasing the disk in question. I have tried to explain why already. I will find the article from netgear that explains why it’s not, but their suggestion to do factory reset is also not working on drive 3.
you are not understanding what I have written about the error messages. Remove the two working drives does not fix the problem. I already tried to do factory reset with only drive 3 present in slot 1 and that fails to erase it also. If I had a pc I would put drive 3 in there to diagnose and erase all partitions, but I don’t. Readynas is clearly confused by its status and refuses to erase it.
I am about ready to give up in this as apparently nobody knows and it’s taking too much of my time. I will just use the two drives, if possible as separate non raid volumes or maybe one huge jbod if I can figure that out. Readynas is dead technology anyway just trying to use these drives a little longer before I move on to different ssd based solutions in the future
If I had a pc I would put drive 3 in there to diagnose and erase all partitions, but I don’t
You could of course do this using ssh (or tech support mode) in the NAS. Use the smartctl tests to verify reads, and dd to overwrite with zeros (followed by looking for errors after the overwite).
Factory resets are supposed to reformat all drives - there is no failsafe to prevent data loss when you do one. AFAIK the only things that might disrupt the reformatting are a failed smart test or write errors on the drive.
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