- Aug 25, 2001
- 56,570
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I recently set up a brand-new QNAP TS-431 4-bay NAS.
I loaded 4x2TB 5400RPM Hitachi CoolSpin 5K3000 HDDs into it, and booted it, and it went into the EZ Quick Setup procedure.
I opted for a "Bad Block Scan", which took like 12 hours, and then it went to "Formatting: 64%", and stuck there for like another 24 hours.
Seems like there's an issue using drives that have previously been in some kind of server, stopping the format routine? Anyways, I shut it down, started it up, pulled each drive (while on), got a RED status light, plugged each drive back in in sequence, still had the RED status light (didn't auto-recover).
So I downloaded QNAP Finder software ("QFinder"), and it saw my NAS units on my LAN (I have several QNAPs). It showed the TS-431 with a "RED X" mark, along with a green arrow (needs firmware update).
So I tried downloading the firmware, unzipping it on my PC, and uploading it using QFinder to the NAS. That failed, part-way through.
So then I tried again, there was an option to simply "Auto-update to latest firmware", which I chose. It caused the NAS itself to go out and download the firmware (it was connected to LAN and internet), and then it started installing the firmware itself. Which, according to QFinder, quit part-way through, but the NAS status light at that point was blinking green and red, so I figured, I'd let it finish. Which, it did. Then finally, after a reboot, it was showing 4.2.2 firmware, rather than 4.2.1.
I was then able to finally get back into the web interface, and then login with the admin credentials that I set up during the quick setup, and manually re-do the RAID-5, and format the drives. This time, it succeeded, and was doing the RAID-5 re-build in the background as a Background Task. It's been around 12 hours, and it's 75% complete.
But I had another problem. In both Windows 7 and Windows 10, the NAS was NOT showing up under the "Computer" section, but it WAS showing up under the "Media" and "Storage" sections. You could double-click on it under Storage, and it would open the admin web page. But not under Computer, where you double-click to access the shares.
Turns out, the Network Config was wrong, it defaulted to a subnet mask of "255.255.0.0", rather than "255.255.255.0" (the correct one for my small LAN).
Once I corrected that, it showed up.
Edit: Another note, while I'm committing this to Google for posterity.
The TS-431 was noted by others, as having a limit to the RAID array volume size, of 16TB.
With the 4.2.2 firmware, I was given an option of "inode size", when creating the filesystem, with options ranging from 4096 bytes, to 65536 bytes. With 4096 bytes, you get maximum number of files on the NAS, but a max total volume size of 16TB. With a 65536 byte inode size, it says that the maximum volume size is 144TB. With an intermediate inode size of 16384, it showed a maximum volume size of 64TB. I think that's the default.
So the TS-431 isn't as crippled as I once thought it was.
I loaded 4x2TB 5400RPM Hitachi CoolSpin 5K3000 HDDs into it, and booted it, and it went into the EZ Quick Setup procedure.
I opted for a "Bad Block Scan", which took like 12 hours, and then it went to "Formatting: 64%", and stuck there for like another 24 hours.
Seems like there's an issue using drives that have previously been in some kind of server, stopping the format routine? Anyways, I shut it down, started it up, pulled each drive (while on), got a RED status light, plugged each drive back in in sequence, still had the RED status light (didn't auto-recover).
So I downloaded QNAP Finder software ("QFinder"), and it saw my NAS units on my LAN (I have several QNAPs). It showed the TS-431 with a "RED X" mark, along with a green arrow (needs firmware update).
So I tried downloading the firmware, unzipping it on my PC, and uploading it using QFinder to the NAS. That failed, part-way through.
So then I tried again, there was an option to simply "Auto-update to latest firmware", which I chose. It caused the NAS itself to go out and download the firmware (it was connected to LAN and internet), and then it started installing the firmware itself. Which, according to QFinder, quit part-way through, but the NAS status light at that point was blinking green and red, so I figured, I'd let it finish. Which, it did. Then finally, after a reboot, it was showing 4.2.2 firmware, rather than 4.2.1.
I was then able to finally get back into the web interface, and then login with the admin credentials that I set up during the quick setup, and manually re-do the RAID-5, and format the drives. This time, it succeeded, and was doing the RAID-5 re-build in the background as a Background Task. It's been around 12 hours, and it's 75% complete.
But I had another problem. In both Windows 7 and Windows 10, the NAS was NOT showing up under the "Computer" section, but it WAS showing up under the "Media" and "Storage" sections. You could double-click on it under Storage, and it would open the admin web page. But not under Computer, where you double-click to access the shares.
Turns out, the Network Config was wrong, it defaulted to a subnet mask of "255.255.0.0", rather than "255.255.255.0" (the correct one for my small LAN).
Once I corrected that, it showed up.
Edit: Another note, while I'm committing this to Google for posterity.
The TS-431 was noted by others, as having a limit to the RAID array volume size, of 16TB.
With the 4.2.2 firmware, I was given an option of "inode size", when creating the filesystem, with options ranging from 4096 bytes, to 65536 bytes. With 4096 bytes, you get maximum number of files on the NAS, but a max total volume size of 16TB. With a 65536 byte inode size, it says that the maximum volume size is 144TB. With an intermediate inode size of 16384, it showed a maximum volume size of 64TB. I think that's the default.
So the TS-431 isn't as crippled as I once thought it was.
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