In previous posts I wrote about to add disks to a volume when it was degraded. Last week I walked in to the issue that i had 6 disks added to a volume which wasn’t available to erase.
Unless we had to go back to Factory defaults. Which wasn’t an option. You have to login to the device with SSH. (root and web portal password)
With the command get_disk_info -h I was able to see that the disks were in the same Pool name as the bigger drives. I made honestly a mistake to create after disk replacements the same Volume name as the old one.
root@readydata01:~# get_disk_info -h Device: c0t5000C500650AA729d0 Channel: 6 Controller: 0 Model: ST2000NM0033-9ZM Serial: Z1Y0TGPK Firmware: SN03 Class: SATA RPM: 7200 Sector size: 512 Sectors: 3907029168 Pool: Backup PoolType: raidz PoolState: 0 PoolHostId: 2143784176 ATA Error Count: 0 SMART Data: Reallocated Sectors: 0 Spin Retry Count: 0 End-to-End Errors: 0 Command Timeouts: 0 Current Pending Sector Count: 0 Uncorrectable Sector Count: 0 Temperature: 26 Start/Stop Count: 24 Power-On Hours: 26374 Power Cycle Count: 25 Load Cycle Count: 1140
I was looking for a way to format the drives which were not correct. In the end I found command lists of Oracle Solaris file system where ZFS is part of. when you use the command format
root@readydata01:~# format Searching for disks...done AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS: 0. c0t5000C500650A81ADd0 <ATA-ST2000NM0033-9ZM-SN03-1.82TB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000c500650a81ad 1. c0t5000C500650A745Cd0 <ATA-ST2000NM0033-9ZM-SN03-1.82TB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000c500650a745c 2. c0t5000C500650AA729d0 <ATA-ST2000NM0033-9ZM-SN03-1.82TB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000c500650aa729 3. c0t5000C5006507DA19d0 <ATA-ST2000NM0033-9ZM-SN03-1.82TB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000c5006507da19 4. c0t5000C500650672E3d0 <ATA-ST2000NM0033-9ZM-SN03-1.82TB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000c500650672e3 5. c0t5000C5006509249Ad0 <ATA-ST2000NM0033-9ZM-SN03-1.82TB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000c5006509249a 6. c0t50014EE0AEDA1E92d0 <ATA-WDC WD4000FYYZ-0-1K04-3.64TB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g50014ee0aeda1e92 7. c0t50014EE0AEDB9B1Bd0 <ATA-WDC WD4000FYYZ-0-1K04-3.64TB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g50014ee0aedb9b1b 8. c0t50014EE0AEDCCE0Fd0 <ATA-WDC WD4000FYYZ-0-1K04-3.64TB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g50014ee0aedcce0f 9. c0t50014EE0AEDD3C1Dd0 <ATA-WDC WD4000FYYZ-0-1K04-3.64TB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g50014ee0aedd3c1d 10. c0t50014EE6B14A07F4d0 <ATA-WDC WD4000FYYZ-0-1K04-3.64TB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g50014ee6b14a07f4 Specify disk (enter its number): 0
I saw the drivers. I selected 0 to 5 one by the time and selected this one. You get a new menu in your screen.
FORMAT MENU: disk - select a disk type - select (define) a disk type partition - select (define) a partition table current - describe the current disk format - format and analyze the disk fdisk - run the fdisk program repair - repair a defective sector label - write label to the disk analyze - surface analysis defect - defect list management backup - search for backup labels verify - read and display labels inquiry - show vendor, product and revision volname - set 8-character volume name !<cmd> - execute <cmd>, then return quit format> format Ready to format. Formatting cannot be interrupted and takes 7631 minutes (estimated). Continue? yes
Type format and press enter. you get a warning to see. when you say yes. your system will format this drive. the web interface wouldn’t be available from that moment any more. Why I not known by me.
You have to have some patient. After the format you have to reboot the Readydata device. (when this is not possible during work hours plan some maintenance time)
After the reboot the disk isn’t part of the old volume anymore and you can create a new one.
You can do multiple drives per time per ssh session. how ever it’s not recommended to do this. Unfortunately, Netgear level 3 support haven’t answered on a ticket we requested last week. So we had to find a way to do this without to much hassle.
Bit of a late comment. But anyone else doing this, it is much faster to use FDISK after selecting the disks, to simply remove the partition table on the disk. then reboot the RD5200. No need to wait thousands of minutes for the format.