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Setting up a new NV+

Adrianwi
Aspirant

Setting up a new NV+

Ok, so I bought a diskless NV+ a few weeks ago and 2 WD 2TB drives. Set up pretty straight forward and only one call to support and a factory reset but no data copied so nothing lost!

Very happy with the performance (compared with my previous setup of a 1TB Buffalo NAS and several USB drives) so have decided to increase to the maximum capacity.

Here's where the question comes! I actually bought another 3 WD 2TB drives (they were pretty cheap and it thought it made sense to have a spare drive the same if one fails) and want to test they all all good before sticking one away as a spare.

I put 1 in earlier today and am waiting for it to initialise and wa planning to put another in (once it's finished) and wait for that to initialise. When all 4 are up and running, can I just eject one and put the 3rd one in and will that just initIalise and leave me with ~6TB? If I do nothing with the removed drive, will that be OK to put straight back in if Amy of them fail, or would it be better to wipe it before putting back into the NV+

Thanks in advance
Message 1 of 15
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Setting up a new NV+

If you have 4 disks in the NAS and remove one you will have a non-redundant array till a disk is put in that slot, is initialised and a resync has taken place. Generally disks should only be removed if they are bad or you no longer wish to use them or for a specific reason you are told to hot-remove (remove while NAS is on), then hot-add (add while NAS is on) a disk. If you hot-add (add while NAS is on) a used disk it should be wiped and added to the array.

I would suggest you ensure you have a good backup of important data primarily stored on the ReadyNAS. See also Preventing Catastrophic Data Loss

Welcome to the forum!
Message 2 of 15
Adrianwi
Aspirant

Re: Setting up a new NV+

Thanks for the advice.

Woke this morning to fine the 3rd drive still initialising, with Frontview saying 99% complete 15h 7mins remaining 😞

When I went to bed (about 8 hours ago it was about 60% complete with less than 4 hours to go.

Is this normal for a ReadyNAS?
Message 3 of 15
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Setting up a new NV+

The sync can take quite a long while particularly on the entry level devices
Message 4 of 15
Adrianwi
Aspirant

Re: Setting up a new NV+

Down to just over 11 hours and then "Disk initialisation failed on channel 3. This disk should not be used."

This might not be the simple storage/backup solution I was looking for.

I've rebooted and reinstalled both drives so I now have all 4 WD 2TB drives in the box.

Channel 3 is initialising - Initialising 10% complete, Time to finish 8 hr 41 min

Channel 4 is just sat available - Ch 4 : WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0 [1862 GB]

I'm assuming this will need to initialise if 3 ever completes.

Thinking I might have been better with the Ultra 4...
Message 5 of 15
PapaBear1
Guide

Re: Setting up a new NV+

The correct solution would have been to remove the disk in slot 3 and inserted the one that was destined as a spare without rebooting.

It can take quite a while to resync, especially with the larger drives. It basically synchronizes the drives, one sector at a time, and when you have more sectors, it takes longer. You may want to hook up the drive that failed and run WD's Data Lifeguard tools on it. Or simply return it to the vendor as a DOA drive.

I can't argue with the fact that an Ultra 4 is a faster machine, but even on it a resync takes time. While my NVX, also an x-86 based machine (32 bit Intel vs 64 bit Intel) still takes 10 hours with 2x1TB and 2x3TB drives where it used to take about 6 hours with 4x1TB drives. But the NV+ is certainly a capable machine. If later you decide to upgrade to an Ultra 4, hang on to the NV+ for use as a backup machine. My NV+ was my primary (and only) NAS for 3 years, then it became the back up for my first NVX. Now it serves as an additional backup for my critical files (photos, financial records) and some misc. files.
Message 6 of 15
Adrianwi
Aspirant

Re: Setting up a new NV+

Given up on the 1st attempt So going to get all the data off and then factory reset with all 4 drives in and a RAID5 config.

Still every chance this is going back to Amazon 😞
Message 7 of 15
PapaBear1
Guide

Re: Setting up a new NV+

Don't confuse a drive problem with a problem with the NAS itself. When I mentioned returning it to the vendor, it was in context of the drive in slot 3. Of course if you have changed you mind and want the faster unit, that is another choice.
Message 8 of 15
Adrianwi
Aspirant

Re: Setting up a new NV+

Well, some progress but not all good news!

I did a factory reset with all 4x2TB WD20EARS drives in the NV+, selected RAID5 and left it for the week as I've been working away.

Back home tonight and I have a 5.3TB volume but 1 dead disk in bay 4 so not redundant (which is what I was looking for). As I'd bought a spare I've removed the dead one and put the replacement disk in and will see what happens in 33h, which is how long it's saying its going to take to complete the recovery :?

Why does it take so long with completely empty drives?

Also just read Lion doesn't support TImemachine which is a bit of a blow as I'd installed the GM over the weekend for a sneaky peak. Fingers crossed for a reasonably speed resolution on that one...

I'm also getting the following error - any ideas?

Error in evaluating table display raidvol [Exception... "Index or size is negative or greater than the allowed amount" code: "1" nsresult: "0x80530001 (NS_ERROR_DOM_INDEX_SIZE_ERR)" location: "https://192.168.168.100/js/dialog.js Line: 3182"]
Message 9 of 15
PapaBear1
Guide

Re: Setting up a new NV+

Since you have no data at risk, I would simply removed the new disk you added to bay 4 and do a factory default with the 3 drives in place. I would return the bad drive that was in bay 4 initially and perform the vendor tests on the replacement drive you put in bay 4.

Thirty three hours to do a resync is way too long. The longest time my NV+ has ever taken on a resync was about 8 hours.
Message 10 of 15
Adrianwi
Aspirant

Re: Setting up a new NV+

Firstly, thanks for the help and advice. It's much appreciated.

Same result with the replacement drive so I figured it can't be the drives, so though I'd swap disks 1 and 4 and then do another factory reset. This also reported disk 4 (previosuly disk 1) as bad, so wondering whether I have a faulty unit with a problem on bay 4?

I'm going to do another factory reset and try again with RAID-X...
Message 11 of 15
Adrianwi
Aspirant

Re: Setting up a new NV+

Result!

Everything up and running with the 4 disks. After several factory resets managed to pin it down to a faulty drive.

Thanks
Message 12 of 15
PapaBear1
Guide

Re: Setting up a new NV+

Glad it is up an operating. I would try to return the bad disk to the vendor rather than RMA it with the manufacturer. If your RMA the disk to the manufacturer, you will most likely receive a refurbished drive as a replacement.
Message 13 of 15
Adrianwi
Aspirant

Re: Setting up a new NV+

Will be on it's way back to Amazon on Monday and my replacement is already on it's way 😄
Message 14 of 15
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Setting up a new NV+

As for Lion support take a look at the RAIDiator beta forum. 4.1.8-T5 supports Mac OS X Lion.
Message 15 of 15
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