Format RAID failed

[frazier]

During initialization of my F4-220, the formatting stops at 10%. This message appears: "Failed to format RAID! Your hard drive system partitions may be abnormal. Please initialize your hard drives and try again.". I have 3 10 TB discs (disc 1 and 2 have data on them so they will get erased, disc 3 is new, so empty) and 1 new 16 Tb in the fourth slot. At first the 16 TB did not show up in the list but when I started up TNAS it did show up. I tried 3 times to initialize again (as requested), always the same message. I want to format in JBOD (I can't choose single disk in this formation, and with the RAIDs I would loose 6 TB of storage as useless storage space). Help would be appreciated!

[TMSupport]

Please advise the exact HDD model number.
And please LLF( low level format) your HDDs on your computer first, and try the initialization again.

[TMroy]

There may be some small issues on your drives. We plan to release a new update of TOS in one or two days, with the new update, system may ignore some minor issues on your drives and then that will make you be easier to complete your initialization.

[frazier]

Thanks, I was actually hesitating to do the "low level "format" that your colleague suggested, as I Googled it and there are a lot of warnings against doing this, plus the software you need seems to take forever (I read about 180GB/hour, which would take over 50 hours for a 10TB drive). I've got 46TB to do, so that's hardly an option. I'll wait a few days for the update. Do I keep checking the download page? Thanks a lot!

[frazier]

has there been an update released yet? When I look up the download page, it still says V4.1.24.
Customer support wrote a few days ago that a new update was coming in 1 or 2 days, that may solve my problem.
Could it possibly be an option to connect the drives to my PC again and format them, so when I put the drives in the NAS, they are clean and empty.?

[TMroy]

Hi frazier,
A new update has been released. viewtopic.php?f=28&t=569
Just follow the instruction to install a new update.

[TMroy]

Just one moment, if your device has not been initialized, you should download the installation package here: http://dl.terra-master.com/cn/TOS_S2.0_ ... 231809.ins

[frazier]

if this is the way Terramaster does things, it's never gonna work. I downloaded the installation package for the second time, as I downloaded the link on the download page earlier. Do you have a deal with internet explorer or something, I've read several complaints that you HAVE to use this. Well, I have the explorer app installed, but the .ins file that's downloaded just does NOT wanna open (the full screen "flashes" for a millisecond, like it wants to open, but nothing happens). I had never even heard of a .ins file and you don't even get an answer on Google. How about making these things plug & play, you're just giving the customer more headaches we can all do without!
My questions only get half-answered, and the things you suggest I can't even try because they don't open. If I don't get a satisfying solution, I will have to return the NAS to Amazon, and walk away from Terramaster hardware forever. I'm certainly not gonna wait till my time to return is over. Sorry to be this bitter, but I'm fed up with it, we don't all have to be tech wizards to install a NAS now do we?

[TMroy]

Hi frazier,
I am sorry, it was my fault, I forgot to tell you how to install your new TOS with the ".ins" package. Actually you do not need to open the ".ins" package, you just need to select it as your installation package during your installation.

Here is the instruction to reinstall your TOS.
viewtopic.php?f=75&t=423

For your case, I think you need to operate as option 2.

[frazier]

Thanks, but the problem is still there. I think the problem is the fourth drive (16TB). I mentioned in my first post that at first the NAS didn't find that drive. As shown in the attachments, it's the same now. When the "create RAID" step comes, it does recognize the drive (when inserting the drives, the fourth light didn't light up, but now all four lights burn). But when I start formatting, it stops at 10% (as explained before).

I would think I best try to initialize the NAS without the 16TB drive, or not?
But I would like confirmation (or another solution of course) before trying this, as I don't want to ruin things experimenting.

Thanks