Repourpose the Drives

Printers, HDDs, USB/eSATA drives, 3rd-party programs
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borg357
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Repourpose the Drives

Post by borg357 »

Well, I just went though a successful drive expansion upgrade on my TS-559 Pro+.. Awesome.. 11TB's

So, I want to Repourpose the five 2.5TB Drives for storage and off site back ups. However, I plug them into my Mac, and I can't see that they have more then 300GBs.. I tried everything, and they just don't see that they are 2.5TB.. So, I'm assuming that they have hidden RAID partitions taking up 90% of the drives..

So, dumb question, but how does one re-format (or re-set) to gain back 2.5TB??

Thanks
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doktornotor
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Re: Repourpose the Drives

Post by doktornotor »

I'm gone from this forum till QNAP stop wasting volunteers' time. Get help from QNAP helpdesk instead.
Warning: offensive signature and materials damaging QNAP reputation follow:
QNAP's FW security issues
QNAP's hardware compatibility list madness
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Dear QNAP, kindly fire your clueless incompetent forum "admin" And while at it, don't forget the webmaster!
borg357
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Re: Repourpose the Drives

Post by borg357 »

Thanks for the reply, however, the fact that I don't see the hidden partitions on a Mac, probably means that I'm NEVER going to be able to use a Mac to adjust, format, or partition these drives. More then likely, I'm going to have to use a Linux or PC utility to fix the trouble. So, pointing to a Mac forum is a bit like asking eskimos, how they deal with the heat.
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schumaku
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Re: Repourpose the Drives

Post by schumaku »

There are no hidden partitions. Complain with Apple if you are convinced OS X can't deal with a complete removal of all partitions from industry standard MBR partitioned drives.

Not convinced you will be right: What might be not available form the click and pray side can certainly be done from the OS X shell using administration/root rights: Erase the partitions table form an external storage device should be as easy as on a Linux system using dd. Watch your step - I'll avoid to publish an how-to for OS X.

On U**x, Linux, or a Linux-based NAS, it's about the same - and I'm convinced this works similar on the Unix-like OS X. Assume the device plugged and mounted is /dev/sdi (a typical device used for the first external storage on a QNAP NAS):

[~] # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdi bs=512 count=1

Now unplug, and re-plug the now "empty" HDD.

Fully agree with the doktornotor: This is not a NAS issue at all.
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