Should my NV+ be doing this?

[Webagents]

I received my second hand NV+ (which had been reset and was diskless) yesterday.

I installed 4 x 2tb drives (3 were completely unused - one had been used as external pc drive)

I then connected it to the router and powered it up.

RAIDAR saw it and I clicked setup and when through changing ip, password, users etc.

But on the volume (which says volume c) it does not give me the option of setting any raid on it.

Can anyone tell me what should be happening if anything (either in raidar or on the lcd) or if I've done something wrong?

TIA

[mdgm-ntgr]

After you first power the NAS up you have 10 minutes to choose the RAID mode clicking setup using RAIDar. After that X-RAID will automatically be chosen for you.

What brand and model disks? Are they on the HCL

What version of RAIDiator came on the unit?

If it wasn't 4.1.7 (or later) I would suggest updating to that (see http://www.readynas.com/RAIDiator_4_1_7_Notes), be sure to reboot when prompted and then after verifying that the update completed successfully do a factory reset (http://www.readynas.com/kb/faq/boot/how_do_i_reset_the_readynas_to_factory_default)

After initiating the factory reset, there will be another 10 minute countdown in which you can choose the RAID modes.

[Webagents]

Thanks for the reply.

The unit came with 4.1.7

The drives are on the hcl.

I installed the drives then powered up the unit and didn't choose anything in raidar except setup after the nas status changed from booting to 4.1.7 and I then went through the wizard.

The nas lcd is on all the time.

The radar lights are yellow for volume and hovering over it shows a tooltip that says:

Volume C Raid Level X Dead 793mb (0%) of 1848gb used

[mdgm-ntgr]

I would try a factory reset (e.g. via System > Update > Factory Default in Frontview)

[Webagents]

Just selected to do a factory reset - it asked me what raid I wanted so that seems to have resolved my issue 😄

Many thanks 😎

One more question, is it worth using the snapshot feature???

[mdgm-ntgr]

On the NV+, the snapshot feature is useful if you will be backing up the data on the NAS during a period where you may be adding data to the shares which are being backed up. To backup from the snapshot you can backup sharename-snap, rather than sharename.

[Webagents]

Thanks for the explanation of the snapshot feature - very clear it was too.

But what issues can be encountered if the snapshot feature is not used and data is written too and deleted from the nas whilst a backup is happening?

[mdgm-ntgr]

If you have snapshot space allocated but no snapshot created it's not going to do anything. If you
do have a snapshot and it's invalidated but you are not backing up the snapshot that shouldn't affect your backup job.

[Webagents]

Sorry, but what I meant was if I don't allocate any space to the snapshot feature, and don't use the snapshot feature - what are the downsides if I use the NAS for data retrieval/writing whilst I am backing up my data to an external device?

[mdgm-ntgr]

Your backups may be inconsistent (e.g. you need two files to be consistent in that you have e.g. the most recent versions of both for the backup to be useful) i.e. you could have a file backed up at 12am and another at 1am, but the two files have been changed between 12am and 1am so the versions don't match.

Also some files may not be backed up.

If using e.g. rsync, then a subsequent run would correct these issues. The snapshot feature is an enterprise feature and most home users wouldn't need it.