Automatic ReadyOS upgrade? Location of ReadyOS software

I have seen nearly the same behavior twice on rack mount systems booted without a hard drive.  I reported it here, and the reply from the mods was that it "is not possible".  Perhaps now, they will listen a little more.  I believe there is something different about how the rack mount systems address their flash memory that does make it possible.

Here is what I believe happened:  Your original NAS didn't see 6.10.2 because you have it set to only look for "Long Term Support" upgrades, 6.9.5 being the last of those on the server (though I believe 6.9.6 should be).  When you booted the new NAS diskless, it auto-updated the flash to the latest, that being 6.10.2 since there was no installed system to tell it to only look for "Long Term Support".  Then, when you put the drive in, the NAS updated it because the version in the flash was newer.  If you put that drive back i the original NAS, it may update it to 6.10.2, too.

Lesson I learned:  If you don't want a rack mount system to auto-update the flash, and you have a reason to boot diskless, pull the Ethernet cable until the boot completes, or use another method to isolate it from the internet and the Netgear update server.

If you really don't want 6.10.2 on the second NAS, AFAIK, you can safely use a scrratch drive and revert.  Reversions are not recommended on active systems, but everything I see looking at the flash content says the flash OS image is completely over-written and as long as you factory default afterward, going backwards is fine.

You'll probably have to wipe out the OS partition on the updated drive and l;et it re-sync to insure it doesn't update everything to 6.10.2.