NV+ X-RAID Expansion with WDC drives

A few days later , the 'fight' is over and the dust has settled.

That's what I did:
- Backed-up all data to external USB drive (after enabling 'fast USB writes')
- I keep the second new 2 TB disk as a spare to replace the next failing disk
- Reset to factory defaults (enabled 4k sector support)
- Waited for drives to be initialized (formatted) for the good part of a night
- Verified in partition.log that start sectors are multiples of 8
- Restored data from external drive

All seems good now.

Lessons learned:
- Before you buy any hardware (disks, memory), check HCL first
- Have a current backup of your NAS in case you have to restore factory defaults
- At least maintain a suitable infrastructure (e.g. a big enough USB drive) to back-up on demand
- Before scheduling the first USB backup, check if you want to enable 'Fast USB writes' performance option
- Keep your firmware reasonably up-to-date (probably requires reading the release notes)
- Netgear support is fast and competent. That's how you keep customers…