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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 a factory reset on one drive as Flex-RAID 0 which should give me a new C volume that uses that drive, and then hot-insert another drive and create a second volume (which would be called D).
However, I can't get past the factory reset stage. When I run factory reset, I can load RAIDar and it tests the drive OK, and then I can click setup and select Flex-RAID volume 0, and it tells me it's going to create the volume and that after the volume creation process completes I should be able to access this device. The status then says "Creating Volume" for awhile, and eventually RAIDar quits out of the status screen and says it can't find any NETGEAR storage on my network. At this point, the power and disk activity lights are out, and only the drive 1 light is green.
I leave it alone for several hours to make sure the process completes, which it eventually seems to because the power light and disk activity lights turn on, along with the drive 1 light staying lit green. However, RAIDar is never able to find the device again, even if I power it off and on again, and I have never been able to access the admin page which should be at 192.168.0.65 on my network. The only way RAIDar finds the device is if I go in with a factory rest or OS reinstall option, but neither of those result in a normal boot that works. I don't know what firmware is running on this device because it sounds like that is all handled from the browser-based admin page, and I haven't made it that far yet. Any idea what I'm doing wrong or anything else to try here? Thanks
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 articleherewhich 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.
I was able to telnet in and discovered the firmware is 4.2.26 according to etc/os_version. I have tried to update the firmware to the latest 4.2.31 using the usbrecovery tool, but the unit never powers off after I try to boot with the USB attached holding the backup button. Tried a couple different USB flash drives too. Not sure what do from here.
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?
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?
It’s straightforward to check the internal flash using telnet. You have already advised above in an earlier post that you were able to telnet into the device.
If you mount the internal flash you can check that the md5sum checksums match those in the md5 file. I expect you may find that one of the files is corrupt.
@mdgm wrote: If you mount the internal flash you can check that the md5sum checksums match those in the md5 file. I expect you may find that one of the files is corrupt.
Not entirely sure how to do this, but I took at stab at it. I mounted /dev/sda1 which has the files csum.md5, initrd.gz, kernel, memtest, root.tlz, supplmnt.tlz, syslinux.cfg, and version.txt. I ran cat on csum.md5 and then checked md5sums of the files, and found that root.tlz does not match the csum.md5 file. How do I proceed in correcting this? Trying to update to firmware 4.2.31 using the RAIDiator 4.2 USB Recovery Tool doesn't work, even after trying 3 different USB flash drives (device never powers off after waiting 20 minutes from booting with the flash drive inserted into the front USB slot and the "Backup" button held down for 15+ seconds). One of the flash drives I have has an LED activity indicator, but that never lights up when trying to do the firmware update. Can I mount a USB drive and update the firmware while connected with telnet? Any ideas of something else to try?
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 articleherewhich 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.
