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The drives were not dead, the volume was. When you formatted them in the 6-bay NAS and they were the wrong size, it couldn't create a proper volume. But the 6-bay saw what had been done and recognized an improper configuration rather than blank drives, and it called that a dead volume. Formatting in a Windows PC isn't what you need to do. You could remove all partitioning using a Windows PC. But as @StephenB says, at this point a factory default is the better approach. If you are going to do that and have not converted the NAS to OS6, now is the time you should make that decision. I personally think that the viability of an OS4.x NAS is going to be cut short before too long because the protocols used are going to be eliminated, not just depreciated, from Windows and browsers, so you should do it even though you give up Netgear support.
Unfortunately, the steps you did to use all the drives were wrong. You need to put all the data on the 4 drives, then move just them (with power off) to the 6-bay, then add the other drives. Even with OS6, the new drives need to me the same size or larger than the old. Well, there are some specific exceptions, but don't count on those. Note that the new drives will require two syncs for the first and three for the second when added to the initial 3. If you do update the 4-bay to OS6, you'll need to do the same with the 6-bay before moving the drives.
The drives were not dead, the volume was. When you formatted them in the 6-bay NAS and they were the wrong size, it couldn't create a proper volume. But the 6-bay saw what had been done and recognized an improper configuration rather than blank drives, and it called that a dead volume. Formatting in a Windows PC isn't what you need to do. You could remove all partitioning using a Windows PC. But as @StephenB says, at this point a factory default is the better approach. If you are going to do that and have not converted the NAS to OS6, now is the time you should make that decision. I personally think that the viability of an OS4.x NAS is going to be cut short before too long because the protocols used are going to be eliminated, not just depreciated, from Windows and browsers, so you should do it even though you give up Netgear support.
Unfortunately, the steps you did to use all the drives were wrong. You need to put all the data on the 4 drives, then move just them (with power off) to the 6-bay, then add the other drives. Even with OS6, the new drives need to me the same size or larger than the old. Well, there are some specific exceptions, but don't count on those. Note that the new drives will require two syncs for the first and three for the second when added to the initial 3. If you do update the 4-bay to OS6, you'll need to do the same with the 6-bay before moving the drives.
