Netgear | ReadyData disk format cli for new volume

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.

1 thought on “Netgear | ReadyData disk format cli for new volume”

  1. 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.

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