Mounting compatible HDD to WD Sentinel DX4000

[111371]

Hello, I have a problem on mounting compatible HDD to WD Sentinel DX4000.

Details:

RAID1 was installed (2 compatible HDDs)

Added another compatible HDD WD to 2TB.

In the Windows Storage Server R2 server administration panel, (tab: “Monitor”), “new hdd” appears. On the panel of the NAS itself, all indicators are lit “green”, indicating that the HDD is compatible.

After reading the documentation for this server, I found out that the conversion from RAID1 to RAID5 should be done automatically. (It takes about 24 hours) - but after 48 hours this did not happen.

By the means of Windows Storage Server R2 itself, when switching to the “disk management” tab, a new device (HDD) is not displayed.

When you switch to the “Events” tab in the “Server Administration Panel” (Windows Storage Server R2), the event for the new HDD is not displayed. (In the instructions for this NAS, it is said that this event should be displayed, after which the disk can be added, on NAS system)

Please help with this question, why conversion from RAID1 to RAID5 is not automatic?

How to add a third device (HDD) to the WD Sentinel DX4000? (If the instructions are not what did not work)

[Timothy_G]

You may need to run the drive enabler software on the Sentinel for it to properly accept the new drive.
https://support.wdc.com/product.aspx?ID=1601&lang=en#WD_downloads

Click on downloads, click the Drive Enabler software. Click the “More Info” button for the installation instructions.

[Gramps]

I find it odd that it shows in the monitor tab but not diskmgmt.msc
Are you sure that diskmgmt.msc is not showing your one drive as larger than it was

[DTMtech]

This is pretty known issue which also affected some of my DX4000.

I would suggest first to do the following on the HD to be installed on another machine:

diskpart clean
convert the drives into GPT drives without formatting

Then I would suggest to check the following two links:

Helpful Information for WD Sentinel DX4000 Users installing New Hard Disk

Hi Teak, Thanks for sharing this information. This seems exactly the same issue I had when trying to expand my DX4000 from 2 to 3 drives. It just did not work, clearly for a fault in the original WD install. In our case I managed to solve the problem with Intel RST driver even if this led to few cons. I find amazing to see how users left alone by WD managed to find different solutions to these issues. I wonder whether it might be possible, by using RAIDCFG64, to have a more efficient RAID con…

Expanding DX4000. Complete recovery is the only possibility?

After a very difficult search (they are not even available on the WD store) I found compatible hard drives to expand a 4 Gb DX4000 (2 Gb with RAID1) to 8 Gb (6 Gb with RAID5) I already discovered that with DX4000 you have no control whatsoever on the RAID configuration, but at least I hoped that the RAID1 to RAID5 rebuild would have been done automatically. This is also what the administration manual says. Please note the disks are correctly recognized by dashboard monitor as empty disks, all t…

To cut the story short with my last DX4000 install processes I managed to solve the issue just by reinstalling the raid software from the control panel. At the reboot the Intel tab appeared in the dashboard and you could yourself start the raid extension process.

[111371]

Solution for installing the package: “Drive Enabler software” for WD Sentinel DX4000 - did not help…

Please tell me what else you can do?

How to update drivers on a Raid controller? (Ousley it helps)

[111371]

[DTMtech]

First thing to check is whether the two added drives are compatible with those allowed with the Disk enabler, and of course whether they are compatible with the two already mounted.

If the first check is passed then I would suggest to update the DX4000 to the very latest version: 1.7.6.21 if not done already

Then I would move to the final step which is to re-install the embedded RAID sw via control panel which in one case worked for me.