ReadyNAS Duo was running 2x1TB Hitachi HD's on FW 4.17. I removed these and installed a 2TB WD20EARX drive and let it install. I then performed a firmware update to 4.18 followed by a factory reset by holding reset button for 30 seconds while switching on.
Is there any way to confirm that the ReadyNAS has actually formatted the drive with 4k sectors.
The factory reset instructions suggested that the LED's should blink twice, I presume once the factory reset is finished, but this didn't seem to happen so I am also not sure that the factory reset actually worked. The ReadyNAS did ask me to configure the drive wiht window asking about choice of X-Raid or Flexi-RAID.
I therefore do not want to poulate it with data until I am sure it is correctly set-up.
First - the WD20EARX is not on the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) for the Duo. This does not mean it will not work, just that it has not cleared the testing process. If you have problems and contact Tech Support they can refuse help because of the unapproved drives.
Second it looks like you have gone to a single drive. This provide no redundancy in case of a drive failure.
The drive itself is where the 4K sectors are set up. This drive will always have 4K sectors. The problems were in the fact that a factory default was not done when the drives were installed. Sounds like you have done that.
I checked the partition log earlier today and thought it didn't look right as it showed a starting sector 1*512 as the sector sizes as follows:-
Disk /dev/hde doesn't contain a valid partition table
Disk /dev/hdc: 2000.3 GB, 2000388448256 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243200 cylinders, total 3907008688 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdc1 32 4096031 2048000 83 Linux Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/hdc2 4096032 4608031 256000 82 Linux swap / Solaris Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/hdc3 4608032 3906992335 1951192152 5 Extended /dev/hdc5 4608040 3906992335 1951192148 8e Linux LVM
Disk /dev/hde: 2000.3 GB, 2000388448256 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243200 cylinders, total 3907008688 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x20460800
I also spoke to Netgear Tech support, no offense, but no one knew much about the issue. Western Digitial conversation at least gave me the idea to remove drive and check it with WDAlign to determine what the NAS had done and on checking it showed 4 partitions and no alignment.
I therefore uninstalled all partitions in windows and quick formatted to confirm alignment was in place using WDAlign. I then put HD back into the NAS and made sure reset pin was down on start-up. NAS LED's blinked 3 times during the circa 47 seconds button was depressed (wanted to be sure). Deviceis currently now working, I presume, on installing system although it seems ot be taking a bit of time.
If you looked at my article you would see that your partitions are 4k sector aligned. Do note that the log zip file is designed to be read by NetGear tech support. The utility used to generate partition.log measures 1 sector as 512-bytes (this is a good idea as if they used a larger unit non 4k sector aligned disks would have decimals for start sectors in the log) but as 4k (4096) = 8 * 512, you can see that the disks are 4k sector aligned as the start sectors are divisible by 8.
