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Forum Discussion
Initial Setup, Drive Formatting failure?, Ultra 2
I have just purchased an Ultra 2 ReadyNAS and 2 x 2TB WD Caviar Green EARX drives separatley.
I inserted one drive into bay 2, powered on the unit and followed the procedure for the factory reboot. At this point the lights all went off and the fan remained running and I assumed that the unit was performing its reboot. I left the unit all night thinking that it was taking a long time, however, this morning there was no change; no lights on and fan still running.
I pressed the power button twice and the unit did not power down. I then held the power button in and forced the unit to power down. I then turned the unit back on, it started ok but there is only the power led illuminated, I had expected the disk 2 led to be illuminated now that the drive is in place.
Does the lack of leds indicate that the drive was not formatting? Is there any way for me to know whether I have followed the factory reboot procedure correctly?
At this stage I have not installed the software on the computer since the guide said to do this after installing the drives. The NAS is currently connected to the power only, not network yet.
Should I just assume that the drive is formatted correctly and move on to the software stage? or should I perhaps try the reboot again? If I need to reboot how can I tell whether the process is underway (leds flash perhaps?) Any advice to get me running would be appreciated.
Thanks
Mark
I inserted one drive into bay 2, powered on the unit and followed the procedure for the factory reboot. At this point the lights all went off and the fan remained running and I assumed that the unit was performing its reboot. I left the unit all night thinking that it was taking a long time, however, this morning there was no change; no lights on and fan still running.
I pressed the power button twice and the unit did not power down. I then held the power button in and forced the unit to power down. I then turned the unit back on, it started ok but there is only the power led illuminated, I had expected the disk 2 led to be illuminated now that the drive is in place.
Does the lack of leds indicate that the drive was not formatting? Is there any way for me to know whether I have followed the factory reboot procedure correctly?
At this stage I have not installed the software on the computer since the guide said to do this after installing the drives. The NAS is currently connected to the power only, not network yet.
Should I just assume that the drive is formatted correctly and move on to the software stage? or should I perhaps try the reboot again? If I need to reboot how can I tell whether the process is underway (leds flash perhaps?) Any advice to get me running would be appreciated.
Thanks
Mark
9 Replies
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- Having not yet connected it to the network you cant really do much until you sort that out.
but the drive led should be on and even if you install the raidar software on your computer it cant tell you anything until network is connected. - I can proceed to connect the network but was concerned that stage one appeared to have failed so haven't gone any further. With no lights showing except the power, is it fair to assume that something has gone wrong - or should I just connect it to the network anyway and hope that all is ok.
I only bought it yesterday so if something is wrong I'm keen to get it back to the shop asap.
I'm also concerned about the specific drive not being listed under the compatibility list, so if this is the problem I want to take it back quickly again.
Thanks for your help. - well if the drive led is not lit i would assume something is wrong, because the drive led being off indicates disk bay is empty.
Each disk bay has an LED associated with it on the front panel of the unit. The disk LEDs have these states:
• On. Power is on and the disk is operating normally.
• Blinking. The disk was removed, failed, or is resynchronizing.
• Off. The disk bay is empty. - I have been through the process again to check that I didn't get the procedure wrong, and the same thing happened - after initialising the boot process the fan spins and all lights go out, then nothing. I tried putting the drive into the other bay and that made no difference. I am going to take the drives back to the shop to exchange for something that is definately on the compatibility list - The supposed expert in the shop told me that these would be fine and I foolishly believed him!
Fingers crossed that's the problem.
Mark - What you need to think about is that it could be the drives or the Ultra 2 that could be faulty, because you have only just got both.
update: have you tested both drives ?. - I would install the second drive as a solo in bay 1, connect the Duo v2 to your network, install Raidar on your PC and start Raidar. Then boot the Duo v2. When it initializes it will wait for RAIDar for 10 minutes (part of the initial setup is which version of RAID you are going to use). That is not the problem with the disk you have tried so far, but just stating that you can't really set up the unit or diagnose any problems without it being connected to your network.
I don't know if a ReadyNAS will even initialize a drive until connected to a network or not. Never tried it. I do know that if it is connected to a network but no PC is on and no connection to RAIDar is found, after the 10 minute waiting period is up, it should format and initialize the disk and then set up X-Raid2 as the default RAID format and then configure the array with all the defaults. In short, if connected to a network, it will set itself up if left alone - unless it encounters a problem. - I took my drives back to the shop and they tested them on their in-house pc; Turns out the drive I was trying to install was broken and would not spin up, they replaced the drives with new ones of the same model.
I have now installed the drives and carried out the formatting as per the initial setup instructions and all seems to be working well.
For reference, I did not connect to the network until after the formatting operation and all went smoothly.
For others who may be interested, when I installed the broken drive, there were no lights indicating that a drive was installed; When I put in the good drives the lights were on straight away, even before they were formatted.
Thanks to Herbie and PapaBear for your assitance.
Now the fun starts with getting my new system set up....
Mark - Hope it's smooth sailing from here.
Regarding setup of a new NAS, personally I would connect an ethernet cable between the NAS and the router/switch, put the drives in, then power on (perhaps doing a factory default via the boot menu, though this should happen automatically with new disks) and monitor it using RAIDar (http://www.readynas.com/downloads). When a factory default is initiated there is a 10 minute window to choose the RAID mode. After that if you haven't chosen a RAID mode it will choose the last one you used (X-RAID2 is default). Particularly with the 2-bay models which only have lights (don't have a display on the front) monitoring the device using RAIDar helps if you're interested in knowing what the NAS is doing (installing OS etc.).
Now you can open Frontview and configure the device. Personally I'd recommend updating to the latest firmware, verifying update is successful, then doing a factory default (via System > Update > Factory Default) to get a clean setup on the latest firmware. Do note that a factory default (wipes all data, settings, everything). - Nice to see you have got it all sorted, have fun setting it up. :)
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