How to format new HDD

[1340fxd]

I have a brand new N299 into which I have fitted two brand new hard drives - how do I format the drives please? The manual has a note telling me this must be done but nothing about how to do it

[ccomley]

Easy one!

Have you run the setup wizard? If so, you could've done it from the wizard, but it doesn't matter eitehr way.

Browse into the control panel from your computer. Click on the far rigth hand icon to Login. One logged in, go to the Storage section. You shoul see a panel reporting the existance of your two disks.

Go into the RAID section. Click on your choice of raid type - Generally RAID1 for the safety or RAID0 for speed and capacity but no redundancy.

Leave the other settings the same. And click on "Create".

THIS TAKES about four hours - depending on disk size.

ONCE this has finished, you may need to load new firmware. If you keep getting a box saying "complete the FW upload" and it won't let you do anything else, go into the System tab, click Firmware, use the Browse button to explore the CD and find the firmware upgrade that came with the machine, and Upload it. This takes about five mins and once it's complete you MUST reboot the unit, which takes two or three more minutes.

Then you're done. Create folders and users, turn on services, it's ready to go.

[S]

Thanks for that - confirms what I did (set it up for Raid 1 mirroring) and assumed it would format as part of the setup.

However, instead of taking four hours (and I expected the formatting of two 500 disks to take time) the raid was up and running in about ten minutes.

It all appears to work - have set-up files, users and have backed up data to it BUT it's so flaky. Sometimes it apears on my network - the next time it's gone.

[ccomley]

Have you made the workgroup name the same on the NAS as the rest of your machines?

Do you have anything acting as a WINS server? If so, have you given the NAS its IP address?