My current NV is setup as a 1TB mirror. I'm plan to replace the drives with 2 new 2TB Samsung HD204UI. I understand that because these drives uses the 4K thing, one of the things I need to do is to make sure that Radiator 4.1.7 is installed and to perform a factory reset.
Here is the stupid question. Is there a way for me to check what the factory default firmware is? I remember performing a similar action a while back but I can't remember what version of the firmware it was.
Also can I cheat by taking out the current 2 drives. Put in a blank drive, perform the update and factory reset, then put the current drives back in? Hence avoiding the data wipe and the need to spend ages doing the backup.
Here is the stupid question. Is there a way for me to check what the factory default firmware is?
There is a way to find out if the unit was upgraded from v3 to v4 or has a Factory-default of v4 by checking the block size. Download the system_log.zip from FrontView > Status > Logs > Download All Logs. Open the zip file, then view the volume.log.
Also can I cheat by taking out the current 2 drives. Put in a blank drive, perform the update and factory reset, then put the current drives back in? Hence avoiding the data wipe and the need to spend ages doing the backup.
The OS is contained on a flash memory chip on the motherboard and on each drive. Therefore, once you upgrade the OS to the flash memory it must then be upgraded to the drives. To change the block size, the drives must be reinitialized. As dbott67 pointed out, that requires a factory default with the drives used in the array in place.
You can use one of the Samsung drives as a backup target, copying all the files onto it while attached to your PC for example. Then copy the configuration onto your PC. Then install the other Samsung 2TB as a solo drive (after removing the current drives with the unit off). Then when you boot the unit it will go through a quick setup, after which you can upgrade to 4.1.7 and then perform a factory default. Restore the configuration as pointed out in this article. Then restore the files from the 2TB drive used as a backup.
Then while the 2TB drive used for backup is still attached to the PC, delete the partition on the drive using disk management. Then hot add the drive to the NAS. It will be initialized with 4K blocks and then formatted, then resynced with the other drive.
During this process the original two drives are intact and serve as a fallback in case you encounter problems doing the above.
