Adding more drives

[diehard]

UPDATE:

Ok, I had to right click the file and select Properties and UNBLOCK. Then I reinstalled and got the Console. (ticked the box). Now I get it. Not much to do, really.

It did come at a cost. The case drive lights are off and the LCD display shows 0 drives, WDSENTINEL- 192.168.1.20, Avail.Capacity 4.67 TB, but the array is fine.

So I did an uninstall, noticed that there were 2 Intel Rapid Storage Technology in Add/Remove and the Console, unistalled and keep the original version 10.5.6.1003 after a reboot, lights are good and drives says 4.

[Gramps]

Glad you wasted the time for me

There is not much in there on a "nnormal" Box

[diehard]

An interesting thing happened.

I decided to go into Add/Remove programs on the DX4000 and double-click the Intel Rapid Storage app to reinstall just to make sure all is as it should be. Then I noticed that it added a Intel Rapid Storage Tab in the Dashboard and the app in the main body. How unusual, I didn't expect that there might be some code to allow this.

[Gramps]

My guess would be wd had this and disabled it. This lit it back up?

[Gramps]

This may not be a good idea

I installed it, it said it needed to reboot  12 hours later the lcd still says loading OS

I have 4 drives, guesss I will give it a week and see what it says then

[Nickster]

Instead of formally installing anything new such as the intel control panel, couldn't you try copying the iataiu (I think there is an exe and a couple of dll files) files from another (desktop) computer running Intel RST into the directory of the existing Intel RST directory in the sentinel? Then you wouldn't be installing a second version of the RST. In theory, you could then execute the Intel RST GUI (which I believe is the iataiu.exe file) to show/control the sentinel's RAID parameters.I noticed this GUI is absent from the sentinel's Intel RST version.

I was thinking about trying it, but after hearing what has happened with the intel control panel, I'm a bit trepidatious. There seems to be another layer of control of the drive setup on top of the Intel RST software, as Gramps already mentioned.

[diehard]

wow, that **bleep**.

Hanging on OS Loading doesn't sound right. Seems like it froze. Are the lights flashing. I could see where it decides to do some disk activity but it should show a counter.

[Nickster]

At any rate, I think a worthy improvement to the Sentinel series would be an option for manual RAID array control (even if it came with a page long disclaimer in legalese about how you could really muck things up if you don't know what you are doing). I, for one, would have liked to turn my 8TB four drive array into a 6TB three drive array with a spare fourth drive. Have you seen the cost of replacement drives? They (the 2 TB model) range from about $270 to over $400 each depending on the vendor, and they seem to be an uncommon drive model. It's almost more cost effective to buy another sentinel for spare drives!

[GHoward]

Except that your "6TB three drive array" would have no redundancy (JBOD) which would make the hot spare pointless

However it would be nice for those that need more performance to have the option of a 4TB RAID10 array, or a 4TB RAID5 w/ hot spare for an office that has no on-site support.

[Nickster]

I actually meant a RAID 5 setup with 3 two terabyte disks, not a JBOD config (just using the same capacity terminology as the sentinels are billed as- for example, the 8TB model is configured as a RAID 5 and obviously doesn't have 8TB of free space). So I would have a bit less than 4TB usable space and have a spare. A hot spare option would be nice too.