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Factory Reset Not Working To Setup New Drive
My end goal is to get 2 Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB WD20EARS drives running in this ReadyNAS Pro 2 as separate independent volumes (JBOD). I've read on here that could be possible by first doing...
Success! I was able to extract the firmware, mount the flash memory, and overwrite the files to perform a manual firmware update. I made sure to check the md5sums of all the files before I rebooted to make sure everything was ok.
Extracting the firmware proved a little challenging, because it's all wrapped in a nondescript package. I found an article here which explained how to use binwalk to get the position of the files, and then using dd to extract a tarball using that position information. Since I don't have a linux box running right now and couldn't run binwalk on the NAS busybox, I just downloaded the 4.2.30 firmware version the author of the article used and copied the same dd command to extract the tarball for that specific firmware version.
Rebooting allowed RAIDar to detect the 4.2.30 firmware (it was never able to display 4.2.26 previously because of the file corruption), and the factory default with a single drive connected completed successfully for the first time ever. I was then able to access the Frontview web GUI and upgrade from there to the latest 4.2.31.
As Marc_V says, you need to use RAIDar 4.3.8 to get into flexraid mode with your legacy NAS.
Also, I suggest starting with a single drive, and then add the second after NAS setup. I've found that sometimes the older NAS will somehow end up in RAID-1 or a single RAID-0 volume when switch to flexraid with both disks in place. Doing the reset with only one disk ensures that can't happen.
Your disks are quite old, so you might consider replacing them with newer WD Reds or Seagate Ironwolf drives that are intended for NAS use.
Thanks Marc_V. I tried running RAIDar 4.3.8 but I'm getting the same problem. I can ping the IP and even access telnet when I load the factory defaults boot option and it's in the "testing drives" phase and while the "Setup" option is available. Once it starts creating the volume, it says it completes 100% and then closes out from RAIDar. The power light stays off for about an hour, and then turns back on, but RAIDar can't scan it at this time, and I can only ping the device then, no telnet. I left it overnight to make sure it wasn't still working, but still nothing. Powering it off and back on doesn't change anything, there is no telnet and no ability for RAIDar to find it. I put the drive into my windows box and found that it created 4GB (OS?) partition, a 512MB (swap?) partition, and the remaining 1858GB data partition. I haven't booted into linux to see if it actually wrote any data to the 4GB partition. Is there maybe something wrong with the Raidiator 4.2.26 firmware version that could be fixed by upgrading to the latest version?
This certainly suggests that corrupt firmware on the internal flash is one possibility. There are others.
Trying to update the firmware via USB recovery hasn't worked for me either though, it just hangs and never seems to read from the flash drive. Is there anything else I could try to get this to work?
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