Insanely long factory default settings

Hi all,

Long story short - I have a DX4000 with a mish mash of HDDs in there :-

1- WD2000F9YZ-09N20L0
2- WD2000F9YZ-09N20L1 (WD replacement)
3- WD2009FYPX-09AAMB0
4- WD2000F9MZ-76NVPL0

and I wanted to factory my unit.

I was given a new ISO (EMEA_SvrRecovery_1_7_6_21.iso) – which I believe has downloaded ok.

Quick question - what’s the ‘quickest’ way of re-doing it from scratch?

I’ve ensured the ‘ServerFolders’ were empty - as I didn’t want loads of data on there, but i’m thinking it’s going to be easier to wipe each drive in another system?

I was getting the 0xD9 error - but I re-created storage and it corrected that - I could boot Windows again, but I just want to start again.

At the moment, it says “Recovery started” - and it’s done (i’d estimate) less than 10% of the loading bar for ‘Formatting the hard drives’ in just over a day. I’ve read it might take 6 days for some functions, but there’s no way this is going to even format in 6 days.

Can I wipe the units in another system, recreate storage and then re-run the recovery to reinstall the OS?

Thanks!

Tom

I do not think e faster way of formatting the DX4000 hard drives exists. You just have to be patient and wait completion.

What is interesting is that you were provided a newer version of the .iso virtual cd rom which I understand provides compatibility with hard drives available on the market (e.g. WD2000F9YZ-09N20L1). The latest one I managed to download before the Sentinel disappeared from WD website is 1.7.5.17.

I wonder why this newer virtual CD is not made available to all the customers to ensure as minimum unit expansion or drive replacements. On the WD web site nothing is available.

I was given a link to the older one initially, and after one or two emails - they suggested I try this one.

Hello,

You can either do a USB bootable drive or you can create a virtual CD.

See if the following links helps.
http://support.wdc.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=8561

http://support.wdc.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=9889

http://support.wdc.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=9792

It does take some time, what’s the percentage now?

I’d say around 20% done (up to ‘g’) on “Formatting the hard drives…”

In nearly 2.5 days.

this looks a little bit slow, however as long as the % increases I think you should patient and do not interrupt the process. Please note that in my recovery attempts I found this % not exactly linear, it might be the case that things will significantly speed-up at a certain time.