Sentinel DX4000 Recovery - Stuck on Recreating My Storage

look at the log file on the thumb

could you have used the wrong thumb drive to boot from?

It is quite doubtful that I mixed up the thumb drives. I was pretty careful to keep them separate. I also compared them side by side just now and I did use the correct drive. So, I recreated the RECREATE MY STORAGE thumb drive and retried according to the instructions shown on the “success” page. I am wondering if my Norton antivirus has anything to do with what gets written to the thumb drive. Since I don’t have a list of the files to be contained on the RECREATE thumb, I have no idea if all the files are there or not. All I have is the application saying “success”.

I have now tried the process again. Same thing: The process still seems to hang at “INITIALIZING OK STARTING RECOVERY” - the display does not move beyond that point.

As for looking at the recovery.log file on the thumb, I was surprised to see that there was no log file, either at the root directory or in the WDRECOVERY folder. I don’t think that the process is ever getting to the actual loading phase.

Here’s a question about using RECREATE: When I originally CLEANed both drives using diskpart, should I have created a boot partition on one and done a format as well, or is the RECREATE MY STORAGE process supposed to do that for me?

No just diskpart >Clean
Try a diff “brand” thumbdrive
make sure you are using the recreate thumb, the small one

No clue if it matters but put both drives in the left side of the box

sorry, you say recreate completes with success? There should be a log file on the recreate thumb
Your PC must remain on during the recovery process you should have an indication on your PC screen for next etc
You may need another PC without a 3rd party AV

Let me clarify. The process to create the RECREATE MY STORAGE thumbdrive reports a successful creation (that is from the virtually mounted .ISO image) while the thumbdrive is still inserted in the worker PC. When I insert that thumbdrive into the DX4000 and boot the unit from the newly-created thumbdrive, the process hangs at “INITIALIZING OK LOADING RECOVERY” and never completes, i.e., the message never changes and never says that it was successful. Moreover, if I perform a hard shutdown (holding the on/off butt for 4 seconds) on the DX4000, there is no log file on the thumbdrive. That is what makes me believe that the recreate/recovery process never loaded and never began to execute.

The two drives are located in Slots 0 and 1 (i.e. the left side) of the array. I have assumed all along that Slot 0 will eventually have the drive with the boot partition and the bootable image.

“Your PC must remain on during the recovery process you should have an indication on your PC screen for next etc
You may need another PC without a 3rd party AV”
The (worker) PC must remain on? It is, in fact on. Bot h the worker PC and the DX4000 are connected to the network. The router reports that it gave an IP address to the unit from the DHCP pool. But what application would be reporting to the PC or showing status from the DX4000? At the end of the Recreate Storage wizard, it says the next steps are 1. Shutdown WD Sentinel, 2. Restart WD Sentinal with USB plugged in and pressing button. It says the server reboots in Recovery mode. There is a “Finish” button. Clicking that closes the Recreate Storage wizard. What app talks to the DX4000 over the network?

The recovery process talks to the pc. Both drives will end up with the same stuff on both.

Guess we need to start over, do your drives have the same letters after what you posted? WD2002FYPS-02W3B0 OR WD2002FYPS-02W3B1

Is this diskless unit good?

Yes you run setup.exe from the virtual drive and make a thumb using recreate
insert it in the DX and hold in the reset button on the back while you power on. Hold the button about 20 seconds or until the screen says something. It should say recreate success quickly

Both drives are WD2002FYPS-01U1B1, new, out of the box and they are identical to the eight other drives I have in two other DX4000 boxes (so I am pretty sure they should work on this box).
I am pretty sure the box is good, or should I say, I have no reason to believe the box is bad. it sounds rights, it powers up and the lights blink as I would expect and (they say) it was pulled from an operational system to update to larger servers. I will say that I THINK it works because it shows no sign of not working.
I have been running the recreate scenario as you describe: Run setup.exe from the virtual drive and make a thumb using recreate. Insert it in the DX and hold in the reset button on the back while you power on. Hold the button about 20 seconds or until the screen says “INITIALIZING OK LOADING RECOVERY”. From that point on the LCD display on the DX does not change, nor does the process complete.
But there is no other application running on the worker PC once the Recreate drive is inserted into the DX, correct? It’s all on the DX at this point, right?

If the box(s) came with those drives perhaps
See if there is a whitelist.xml on the thumb and edit it just replace one of the others with your values
I do not see that on the list
https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=9443#panam

Okay, I will try editing the whitelist.
Meanwhile, I also found this factoid on the WDC/support regarding recovery:
Create a bootable USB flash drive for server recovery’ appears during Server Recovery on a WD Sentinel RX4100 or DX4000
Answer ID 9889
Issue:
During a server recovery on a WD Sentinel RX4100 or a WD Sentinel DX4000, a Create a bootable USB flash drive for server recovery message appears. It requests the use of an 8 GB or larger USB flash drive. This occurs even if a drive larger than 8 GB is connected.
Cause:
Due to certain limitations with the Server Recovery image size, there are some requirements that should be considered before running the recovery process on a WD Sentinel RX4100 or a DX4000:
Solution:
Based on our USB compatibility tests, the following limitations have been found:
1. The USB Flash Drive must be a USB 2.0 flash drive (not USB 3.0).
2. Despite what the message says, The USB Flash Drive must have a capacity of 16 GB or 32 GB in size.
A USB Flash Drive with a storage capacity greater than 32 GB will not work.

Based on this info, I replaced the 4GB thumb drive I was using with a 16GB drive and regenerated the “Recreate My Storage” thumbdrive. I also re-cleaned the drives using diskpart on the worker PC.
Because I saw the red lgiths on Port 1, 3, and 4 flash red initially (I later learned this had nothing to do with the drives present in the slots), I booted the DX with the drives in slots 2 and 4. This time, the process proceeded beyond where it was stuck and started loading the recovery OS. The processed died, however, after cleaning the drives with a message “INVALID DRIVE COUNT”. A search of the recovery.log file showed an “invalid numberof drives”:

2009.01.01 05:15:14 - INFO - RaidCfg64 detected 0 drives
2009.01.01 05:15:14 - WARN - No RAID volume detected!
2009.01.01 05:15:14 - INFO - Checking RAID status (2): Volume Missing
2009.01.01 05:15:15 - WARN - RAID volume status is bad or volume is missing, need to re-create the RAID volume: Volume Missing
2009.01.01 05:15:16 - INFO - Deleting all RAID volumes
2009.01.01 05:15:21 - INFO - Re-creating RAID volume
2009.01.01 05:15:21 - ERROR - Invalid number of drives for RAID volume create: 0
2009.01.01 05:15:21 - INFO - =========== Recovery app END (4) ===========

So, it appears that the DX found the two drives and accepted them (or I think I would have received a “bad storage” response. I believe I now need to go looking for the reason for an “INVALID DRIVE COUNT” or how to force the DX to reconstruct the system as RAID 1 rather than RAID 5. However, I’ll try adding the WD2002FYPS-01U1B1 drives to the whitelist first.

Oops! Just opened lcd0.log, whose contents state “INVALID DRIVE”. Now I am definitely headed to edit the whitelist.

Well, my bad! I have two confessions to make:

  1. In looking at the compatibility lists, I realize that my other two DX4000s are 4TB boxes (WDBLGT0040KBK) and the box I am trying to rehab is a 16TB box (WDGLBT0160KBK), so they are NOT identical.
  2. I was wrong about the exact model of the drives. While the two drives I am trying to use in the DX in question are WD2002FYPS-01U1B1, the drives in my original boxes are the canonical WD2002FYPS-02W3B0 (I pulled them out and looked).
    So, I probably do have an incompatible drive problem. The question then becomes whether I can make them compatible using any of the other WDC utilities. While WDC released a drive compatibility utility some years ago, it does not appear that the RECREATE MY STORAGE or RECOVERY drives (OSes) were updated to accept these drives - probably because it would mean updating the DX firmware too. Other than going out and buying two new drives that are on the list, is there a way to make these drives compatible?

Hey, Do not have to look now as I do not remember myself. I think his name is @DTMtech is the expert with the whitelist

FWIW, the NIC is on the same subnet and the Router verifies that it was found, was given an IP from the DHCP pool, and was using it. No problem there.
I also located another community thread that advised that you could edit “the” whitelist. In actuality, the process is:

  1. Generate the RECREATE MY STORAGE thumb drive (on a 16GB or 32GB drive).
  2. Before using that drive, edit BOTH of the whitelist files on the drive: WHITELISTK.XML and WHITELISTS.XML, adding a line that identifies your specific HDD model and conforms to the XML format.
    I did this, rebooted the DX with the new thumb drive and was successful: RECREATE STORAGE SUCCESS".

NOTE: You must also edit the XML files on the RECOVERY thumb drive as well before using it.

Progress, you are my hero !

I have now completed the whole process and have a running server. Thanks for your help. It was invaluable!
I chased a lot of ghosts and went down several rabbit holes on this, but learned a few things. May I suggest that, if others ask for help on the DX4000, give them ALL this information at one time.

  1. Download ISO software for and mount a virtual drive to read the ISO. I used Gizmo. It’s free; it’s good.
  2. Thumbdrives can be either 16 Gb or 32 Gb. Nothing else will work. Period.
  3. If your drive does not match exactly what is in the whitelist (like that WD2002FYPS-02W3B0 thing), then edit the whitelists: In the WDRECOVERY directory on each thumb drive, edit WHITELISTK.XML and WHITELISTS.XML, adding a line in identical format for your drive. The files are write protected, so save to a new name, rename the original file, then rename the new file to the whitelist name.
  4. Completion times are:
    CLEAN - Instantaneous
    RECREATE MY STORAGE - 5 minutes
    RECOVERY - 8 hours or more, depending on disks (8 hrs = two 2Tb drives)
  5. As you work through the create RECOVERY thumbdrive, be sure to keep your PC on. You will need it to monitor the progress. The setup process will ask you to click and follow the prompts.
    Had I had all this info in one place, it would have cut about 3 days off the setup process.

Again, thanks for your help.

This is a great guide - thanks for the clarity.
:grinning: