New f2-423. New 2x 12tb Ironwolf Pros. My first NAS, but I work in IT and have a grasp on fundamentals.
Order of events:
* Put both drives in. Installation of TOS failed at approx 55%, dodgy HDD warning. Tried a few times.
* Swapped the drive bays over. Installation worked. Set up storage pool and 12tb volume. Was only on one drive. 2nd drive (which was originally in #1 slot) status reported = good (as was the HDD in slot 1). Couldn't add it to the storage pool though. Said it would, but just wouldn't appear in the stroage pool info after adding. Thought: I'll deal with this later.
* Added about 2tb of files, set up a plex server. Had it running fine. Served about an hour of a video file while adding more files and indexing library (CPU was busy... TOS reported "system sluggish"... I assumed this was normal). At some point it fell over and couldn't be found on the network. Drives appeared busy. I left it. Came back later. Still unable to get it to respond via browser. TNASPC app said "no device on network". Drives appeared to be almost silent expect for a rhythmic tick doing something or other.
* Held in the power button for a few secs. It shut down.
* Powered back up. NAS now acting like it's never seen me before. Attempting to reinstall TOS (have tried 5.1.95 and 5.1.24) failing saying ...
Failed to create partition! Please try again. If it still fails, your hard drives may have malfunctioned
Please initialize your hard drives and try again. If you continue to see this error, you may need to replace your hard
drives.
... Have tried both of the drives with same result - getting to about 65% and failing... the original slot 1 HDD that wouldnt play at first, reports green 'Good' on the pre install check. The original slot 2 HDD that I moved into slot 1 and got a successful install on reports red "At risk".
So I should "initialize the drives" now (is this what us old timers would have called a low level format?) ... is there no option for the terramaster to do this? I check the forums and I find things like this from T-M - viewtopic.php?t=565#p2362 "low level format on your computer first." Surely the TM NAS should provide that option and manage the drives for me. Isn't this what it's all about? I have no SATA connector and I am on a Mac. How would I do this? Is it really the case that if I have a fresh drive out of the packet I'm fine but if it has some stuff on it or is pre-formatted or needs a low level format the T-M cannot set it up?
Last question: Is it really likely that I have 2 DOA / dodgy new Ironwolf Pros?
A massively underwhelming experience so far I have to say.
All help gratefully received. Thanks.