Formating RAID with Valkyrie stops at 96%

[Patriot_CJ]

1) select both drives
2) select RAID type, JBOD if using single drive only
3) select FAT or EXT2 (recommended)
4) format

Depends on drive size, it may take about 30-40 mins to finish the whole formatting process. Some of you may expereience formating process stuck at 96%. The unit should be still in the format process, so do not restart the system until it finish the tasks.

Here's what was tested in house....

EXT2
Single 2TB HDD Formatting Around 5 mins
FAT32
Single 2TB HDD Formatting Around 5 mins
EXT2 (2TB HDD*2pcs)
RAID0 Setting Formatting 30 - 40 mins
RAID1 Setting Formatting 30 - 40 mins
RAID LINEAR Setting Formatting 30 - 40 mins
FAT32 (2TB HDD*2pcs)
RAID0 Setting Formatting 5-10 mins
RAID1 Setting Formatting 5-10 mins
RAID LINEAR Setting Formatting 5-10 mins

[doninoz]

Hi, I had the Patriot going on RAID1 with 2 WD 2TB Green disks. All was going OK. After a controlled shutdown the drives disappeared from Disk Management and no files could be found. I placed the disks in another computer and all the files were still there. After backing up I decided for a new setup.

Selected both disks;
Selected RAID0;
Selected EXT2;
Selected Format.

System has been sitting at 96% for 50 hours...should have been finished by now. Anyone got any answers???

Stopped system format...removed drives and put in another computer. I deleted partitions and put them back into the Patriot. I tried the process with EXT2 again and still get hung on 96%.

Tried RAID0 with FAT32 and worked fine. reinitialised disks and started the format process again with EXT2 and still hanging at unreasonable time.

[doninoz]

I did some research and finally got mine setup and past the 96%...thanks to 'BadIntentions' who posted this solution...

ust a quick guide to clarify. Several people seem to be running into this issue. So here we go.

***ALL DATA ON THE NAS WILL BE ERASED BY FOLLOWING THIS PROCEDURE!***

Step 1: Format both drives. I HIGHLY recommend EXT2. The unit is much MUCH faster when formatted as EXT2.

1a) Go to Settings, then select Disk Settings.
1b) Select the drive to format under attached devices.
1c) Click EXT2, then click Format.
1d) Repeat for other drive.



Step 2: Format as a raid array.

2a) Under attached device, highlight the drive HDDA, then click >> Repeat with HDDB.
2b) Check enable operation on raid
2c) Select your raid level. *See Notes*
2d) Select EXT2 *See Notes*
2e) Click Format.



Step 3: Verify.
3a) Visit Settings -> Disk Management
3b) You should have one hard drive visible, with the raid level listed.



***NOTES***

RAID 0:
Do not bother with RAID 0. The CPU is too slow to even feed the gigabit network connection, let alone keep up with RAID 0 functions and see a speed improvement at the same time. Purely for marketing crap to put on the box.

RAID 1:
RAID1 is acceptable, but performance will slightly suffer. If you are using RAID 1, performance is probably not a priority.

Linear:
Linear (also known as JBOD) is an excellent solution. It gives you the capacity of both drives, and maintains reasonable performance. I would recommend for applications requiring RAID to combine drive capacities.

FAT32 VS Ext2:
FAT32 is totally and utterly USELESS. Its there for external hard drives. DO NOT use it to format internal drives.

Better still go to his post with pictures!

http://www.patriotmem.com/forums/sho...highlight=ext2

[BadIntentions]

Drives that large can sometimes take so long to format, that the format process itself 'times out' and just stops. If you format each drive individually, and raid, and format again, all the Valkyrie has to do is some juggling around of partition structure. Its usually much faster and more reliable (when it comes to formatting)

[doninoz]

Drives that large can sometimes take so long to format, that the format process itself 'times out' and just stops. If you format each drive individually, and raid, and format again, all the Valkyrie has to do is some juggling around of partition structure. Its usually much faster and more reliable (when it comes to formatting)

Discovering your advice made the difference. that's why I reposted it so that others would be alerted to it.

Another question...With linear I should have 4Tb total space for file access. My system shows 4Tb (or actually 3807765...allowing for the raid/admin partitions) but it shows 11% free when I actually only have 1539Tb of files on the Patriot. Question is, 'where has all the rest of the space gone or is this just mis-reporting?

Also another interesting phenomenon is that sometimes when trying to load files I get a system error saying "cannot copy...file exists"! Cant see the file so I rename it, copy it on and name it back to original name and no problems.
Once I do it to one file then the system will allow copy of all other files even though individually they could not be copied prior to me renaming a copyed file back to its original name.

So what I am thinking is there is some kind of temp directory on the system root with caching that triggers this error (is the same in Windows if there are more than 65,000 files in a temp directory).

I can't find whether there is a temp directory and if so how do you clean it out. Maybe this is why the system is only reporting 11% free when it should be 74% free. What do you think?

Regards Doninoz

[BadIntentions]

Discovering your advice made the difference. that's why I reposted it so that others would be alerted to it.

Another question...With linear I should have 4Tb total space for file access. My system shows 4Tb (or actually 3807765...allowing for the raid/admin partitions) but it shows 11% free when I actually only have 1539Tb of files on the Patriot. Question is, 'where has all the rest of the space gone or is this just mis-reporting?

Also another interesting phenomenon is that sometimes when trying to load files I get a system error saying "cannot copy...file exists"! Cant see the file so I rename it, copy it on and name it back to original name and no problems.
Once I do it to one file then the system will allow copy of all other files even though individually they could not be copied prior to me renaming a copyed file back to its original name.

So what I am thinking is there is some kind of temp directory on the system root with caching that triggers this error (is the same in Windows if there are more than 65,000 files in a temp directory).

I can't find whether there is a temp directory and if so how do you clean it out. Maybe this is why the system is only reporting 11% free when it should be 74% free. What do you think?

Regards Doninoz

You should post a new thread for different issues, keeps info threads cleaner.

[DrewCrewOf2]

I read all the posts and tried the "BadIntentions" suggestions... works for HDD B but HDD A sticks at 96% for hours. I think this product has sum bugs!