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Thread: JBOD and Existing Drive Format

  1. 06-10-2011, 12:33 AM #1
    kevinkar
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    Question JBOD and Existing Drive Format

    Totally new forum for a totally new NAS. Pretty cool.

    Anyway, I have several 1.5TB and 2TB drives sitting around I've used in external enclosures connected to my PC via USB or eSATA. They are all single partitions formatted in NTFS.

    Got the Javelin a few days ago and finally turned it on with one of the spare drives installed in position #1. Booted up, the main LED was RED for a while but eventually turned BLUE. The #1 HD light was BLUE too and I could hear it spin up.

    Problem is that the interface is telling me the "File system contains errors. Please check file system status." and I am not able to see the drive in any of the admin pages including the RAID pages. No status. Then, the HD light eventually goes out. The drive IS spinning. It's a Seagate 1.5TB Barracuda that's otherwise working fine.

    So, reading over the manual (why did they include the giant 161-page multi-language Quick Start Guide instead of the all-English MANUAL???) I don't see any information on JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) or what format they need to be in for the Javelin to use them. I may have incorrectly assumed that you could just toss in a few drives and, if you didn't build an array out of them the Javelin would just use them as JBOD.

    Am I wrong?

    If anyone has any suggestions or insight, I'd like to hear it before I submit a ticket to Patriot. I'll move the drive to different slots to see if they react differently. I'm intending to fill it with 2TB or 3TB drives in the near future and the 1.5TB drive in there is just a test drive.

    Thanks for any help,

    Kevin

    Update - Pulled the drive from #1 and put it in #4. It now shows up in the file management page as Disk 4. Log shows "Disk 4 Plugged in". HOWEVER, in the RAID page, the only tab available is Create and the choices are only 0 or Spare Disk. Only choice I can see to select is Spare so I do that, add it to the right side and said OK. It appears to have simply added it and now the Delete tab is available.

    Unfortunately, none of the other selections are available because they all say "File system contains errors. Please check file system status." I can't even add users, create groups, set up file sharing, etc. I'm at a loss to see why this is not working.
    Last edited by kevinkar; 06-10-2011 at 12:49 AM.
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  2. 06-10-2011, 01:59 AM #2
    BadIntentions
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    I have never tried it with one disk. Right now, I do not have an inactive javelin in my home lab, but I will take my active one and insert a pre-formatted drive to see how it reacts.

    Give me about 30 minutes...
    I AM NOT A PATRIOT MEMORY EMPLOYEE.

    But they have, on occasion, bribed me with hardware.



    I am happy to help, but don't PM me. Post a thread in the appropriate forum so others may benefit and offer assistance.
    Your lack of planning is not an emergency on my part.
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  3. 06-10-2011, 02:36 AM #3
    BadIntentions
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    Quote Originally Posted by BadIntentions View Post
    I have never tried it with one disk. Right now, I do not have an inactive javelin in my home lab, but I will take my active one and insert a pre-formatted drive to see how it reacts.

    Give me about 30 minutes...
    Well, that was exciting. It will want to format a single internal disk no matter what. It does not appear that at this time, a single pre formatted disk is supported. JBOD did not appear as an option (I did not test this, as i have a huge stack of 1TB and 2TB drives sitting here, my bad.) I am sure JBOD support will be fixed in a future firmware revision. Format it RAID 0 and it will start behaving (my test disk did.) I reconnected it to my desktop via USB and reformatted using NTFS. I connected the disk via USB, and it automatically shared it on a share named USBDISK. I connected the same disk via ESATA. I had to reboot the system (that may be due to my ESATA/USB2.0 housing, as it is a bridge not a passthrough) and the drive appeared on a share named ESATA. The device also understood NTFS just fine when connected via USB and ESATA.
    Last edited by BadIntentions; 06-10-2011 at 02:39 AM.
    I AM NOT A PATRIOT MEMORY EMPLOYEE.

    But they have, on occasion, bribed me with hardware.



    I am happy to help, but don't PM me. Post a thread in the appropriate forum so others may benefit and offer assistance.
    Your lack of planning is not an emergency on my part.
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  4. 06-10-2011, 04:16 AM #4
    kevinkar
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    Hey BadIntentions,

    Thanks for checking. Yeah, I know I shouldn't have tried it with just one disk. After all, it's Just a Bunch Of DiskS, not Disk. Duh. Clearly it makes sense this way though I really thought it would treat one drive as just one drive!

    Glad to hear connecting them via the external connections works as one would expect though so, again, thanks for testing that. It's on my list too.

    Ok, so I need to grab a second drive and pop it in and see how multiples work. There's a tiny 160GB drive sitting around here somewhere....

    I'm still not sure about that position #1 yet. I have to try all 4 slots and see how it reacts.

    Thanks again,

    Kevin
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  5. 06-10-2011, 06:23 PM #5
    demonshin
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    When you install a new or pre-formatted hard drive it will need to be formatted by the Javelin for it to make use of the hard drive. Because there are features on the Javelin and all your personal settings are copied on the hard drives. If you log into your Javelin going through the web browser, go to Administrator/ Raid & File System/ Raid Management,it should list the disks installed and show if there is a previous raid array or not.

    From here you can try to recover the raid (if it came from another Javelin) or you delete the partitions and create a new one. This is also very important, say you get your Javelin replaced from RMA or whatever reason and insert the hard drives back into the Javelin go to this location first and select Recover. Do not go through setup wizard because that will just reformat the drives and delete all your data.
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  6. 06-10-2011, 08:16 PM #6
    BadIntentions
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    Yes, the javelin did a nice job of recovering the raid array when I reinserted the drives. I had even deleted the array after I had popped the drives out.
    I AM NOT A PATRIOT MEMORY EMPLOYEE.

    But they have, on occasion, bribed me with hardware.



    I am happy to help, but don't PM me. Post a thread in the appropriate forum so others may benefit and offer assistance.
    Your lack of planning is not an emergency on my part.
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  7. 06-12-2011, 04:24 PM #7
    kevinkar
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    Ok, I see where I made my earlier mistake in my thinking. The Javelin does indeed work with ONE drive installed but, as noted above, it's got to be set as an array with RAID 0. Again, duh. I forgot I did this with my motherboard and its "RAID" set up a while ago. I have two drives installed but didn't want to RAID them together and set them both up as two separate RAID 0's. That's how to get it set up as JBOD. Double duh. I did that ONCE two years ago and forgot all about it!

    So, that being "solved", it's a simple matter to just add extra disks and make them all RAID 0 for 4 separate volumes which is of course not the speediest way to set things up but I'm looking for maximum capacity, not speed. After I see how my capacity situation goes, I'll be able to determine my actual maximum space needed and perhaps change to a mirrored RAID for backup safety. Meanwhile, all my data is still safe on the original drives in their external enclosures (the point of the Javelin is to consolidate about 6 drives into one single location and power supply instead of several enclosures and power bricks all over the place.)

    Thanks for the suggestions and comments. They really helped.

    Kevin
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  8. 06-13-2011, 11:46 PM #8
    BadIntentions
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    If the drives are the same size, and you want speed, a large 4 drive RAID 0 will get you best results.
    I AM NOT A PATRIOT MEMORY EMPLOYEE.

    But they have, on occasion, bribed me with hardware.



    I am happy to help, but don't PM me. Post a thread in the appropriate forum so others may benefit and offer assistance.
    Your lack of planning is not an emergency on my part.
    Reply With Quote Reply With Quote
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