I purchased a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo in December with 1 WD10EADS disk, I failed to check if it was on the official HCL,
but now know that it is listed in the community HCL: http://www.readynas.com/forum/posting.php?mode=post&f=66
After only a few days SMART-errors appeared and I decided to purchase a second WD10EADS so I could get a replacement
disk without losing data, but after physically installing it I got errors in Frontview (and the logs) that implied that the Duo
was not able to use this second drive:
The disk attached to channel 2 could not be used. The most common reasons are RAID resync in progress, faulty drives, and disks that are too small to be added to the array.
I was then (and am now) running RAIDiator 4.1.6.
Rereading the manuals,rebooting and switching bays did not help so I gave up for a while but decided to give it another go
tonight - The usual method gave as much success as previous attempts, but then I read a post where a factory reset seemed
to do the trick.
After backing up the data on the first disk I decided to try a factory reset with only the new, unused disk installed in the first
bay and I removed the first disk. I waited patiently, and after a while I was able to access Frontview and finish the Wizard
without any errors. I'm afraid I didn't notice the size of the previous volume, but I'm fairly sure that the new drive has a slightly
smaller capacity (925GB) than the first disk - even though both disks are supposed to be of equal size (1TB). I guess that
is pretty common, but I thought that could explain why I was unable to use the second disk since it would not have enough space
to completely mirror the first disk. If my assumption is correct I strongly feel it should be mentioned in the manual..
After re-configuring the Duo (static IP, disable AFP, enable DLNA and bitorrent) I decided to add the first disk again, assuming it
should be no problem since I had been using it for months as my main disk and it (most likely) had equal or greater capacity
than the currently installed disk. Frontview acknowledged that I had added a new disk in the second bay, but immediately afterwards
I got the same error that my initial attempts at adding a second disk had resulted in..
Does this error just mean it is busy syncing and that both disks will function after it has finished the operation? Is one of the disks faulty?
If that is the case, why have I been able to setup the Duo with both disks separately, albeit with some SMART-errors on the first disk?
Should I try an upgrade/downgrade of the RAIDiator firmware? Is the Duo itself faulty?
