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[fordem]

This unit - running fw 1.05 has serious format issues - some of the issues may have been present in earlier firmwares.

1)  The system does not always format to the requested capacity.

A lot of my experimentation has been done with 80GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 drives - and I believe as far back as fw 1.03 I have seen the unit format the drives to 7MB (yes megabyte) volumes - that means I can get a 7MB RAID1 array or a 15MB RAID0 or JBOD array.

This happens if I use the web admin to change an existing disk configuration - and it also does it with "clean" drives - drives that have had all the partition table information removed using the clean command in Microsoft Windows' diskpart utility.  On occasion I have been able to change the disk configuration from RAID to standard to JBOD and after 3~4 attempts get it into the desired configuration.

2)  It is possible to get the system totally confused as to what the drive configuration is.

Last night I had the unit in a RAID0 configuration and after some disk failure simulations, decided to put it back into a RAID1 configuration - I started with a working RAID0 volume of 156GB and ended up with a RAID1 volume of 7MB - I then changed it to JBOD and from that point forward all I get is a message saying "The hard drives have been installed incorrectly. Please power off and swap hard drive locations." - this, mind you, is without the drives being physically touched, and more bothersome is the fact that following the instructions results in exactly the same message.

To get out of this loop I am forced to remove the drives and format them indivually and then reinstall them and hope that on the next attempt I will be able to create the desired RAID1 array.

I feel that this is unacceptable - a user who, for whatever reason, decides to change the disk configuration should be able to do so without having to jump through hoops.

[bspvette86]

This is a perfect example of how some advanced disk utilites would be very helpful for this device.  Here is a couple of ideas that would be nice to have:

a) Status page should show FStype, Firmware version the mount was created with, and all partitions on each drive including the hidden system and swap,
b) Status page should show if the disks match the device config and if someone swaps out the drives, give them the ability to match the device config to the drives.  (in case of unit failure, move disks to another....)
c) Control of the partition table for each drive (add, delete, resize)
d) File system check utiliy
e) Modification/choice of the share/mount names
g) Copy partition (between different size partitions if freespace allows)
h) more control over the RAID
i) ability to tell raid which drive is the master/slave in a rebuild operation.
j) ability to have more than 1 RAID mount instead of JBOD after the first partition is created.  (ie volume1= raid-1 and volume2 = raid-0)

[desmoquattro]

I too have been victimized by this. Has anyone been able to resolve?

[fordem]

The resolution is in the penultimate paragraph of my post - anything else will require either a new firmware which is not yet available of hacking the device to allow telnet access.