These aren't in the HCL but the SATA2 version seems to be disappearing fast (and the sub-product code on the HCL seems to be gone already) so what the hell.
Assuming these disks do work (can't find anyone confirming or denying in the forum though there have been a few talking about trying)
I'm using an NV+ with 4x500GB drives today, so I think I might need to do a factory reset. (I'm on Radiator 4.17) - is that true?
I think I also need to backup my data and create a new array (rather than auto-expand it) because of the 4096 block size alignment issue?
Open Frontview and go to Status -> Logs. Click on the words "Download All Logs" in the upper right. This will download onto your PC a System-Log xxx.zip. The file contains the NAS name and date in the xxx area. Double click on the .zip file and it will list about 42 log files. Double click on the volume.log and scroll down to "Block Size =". If your volume was created under RAIDiator 3.x and you have not done a factory default since upgrading to 4.x, the Block Size will be 4096. If you have done a factory default on 4.01 or later, the Block Size will be 16,384. Do not confuse the Block Size in RAIDiator with the 4096 (4K) sector size on hard drives.
To utilize the 4K sector support of 4.1.7, you must perform a factory default after upgrading to 4.1.7. Here is the release announcement: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=47400
Just a quick question - some drives already IN the HCL have 4K sectors, and I'm not talking about the problematic WD models that require a factory default. What about those (i.e. not the WD ones)?
I'm asking because my ReadyNAS Pro lists a 4096 block size in its volume log (thanks for the tip, BTW), as it was initialized with Radiator 3.x. Can I put a, say, Seagate 2Tb drive with 4K sectors WITHOUT resetting the NAS? My objective is to autoexpand, if possible, from 6x1Tb to 6x2Tb.
The ReadyNAS Pro is a x86 (has Intel CPU) ReadyNAS. These never ran RAIDiator 3.x. x86 ReadyNAS use different firmware to Sparc ReadyNAS. The volume on a x86 ReadyNAS has the standard 4k block size. It can be confusing on an issue like this to talk about Sparc ReadyNAS (e.g. NV+) and x86 ReadyNAS in the same thread.
Don't confuse the block size of the volume with 4k sector partition alignment. They are two different things.
To check 4k sector alignment you need to look in partition.log.
Thanks. Very useful. And yes, I did mean Sector Size. I appreciate the clarification.
I'm backing up my data now in order to do a Factory Reset then. Funny, one of the things that attracted me to the NV+ when I bought it was the ability to expand an array without doing this 🙂
NetGear spent a long time trying to develop a way to migrate to 4k sector alignment without a factory reset on Sparc ReadyNAS (this is a major reason for why 4.1.7 was released so long after 4.1.6). Unfortunately this wasn't possible.
Well the disks seem to work fine. I don't yet know if they will exhibit the power saving parking issue. Will keep an eye on the LCC.
After recreating the C volume and rebooting, the third disk started to sync (4th is in my PC as the NAS backup holding pen) and that's going to take about 24 hours. Which seems a lot for an empty volume but I guess writing the parity data isn't a simple 1.8TBs of zeroes (or perhaps it is, but those zeroes have to be written & verified)
Seems happy enough with me copying the data back at the same time, albeit that's only writing at about 13MB/s
Thanks for the advice, all seems to be going to plan.
