AS3204 Format disk to non-raid

[jbg653]

My NAS is set up using RAID 5. I had disc errors on one of the discs so I replaced it with another disc. I want to still use that "bad" disc in Windows for storage of non-critical data. It's a 5 TB drive but in Windows all I see is a 500 GB NTFS volume. How can I convert this disc to be non-RAID so I can format the entire disc to NTFS? In other systems I have used you go into RAID management, select a disk and tell the system to remove it from the RAID array. I don't see how to do that here.

[orion]

Run "diskmgmt.msc" to delete all of partitions, then create new partition for NTFS.

[jbg653]

Thanks orion. I wish it was that simple. That's one of the first things among many that I have tried. When I run diskmgmt.msc it only sees one 500 GB partition. Deleting it does not give me access to the entire 5 TB drive. I'm pretty sure it has to be removed from the RAID array using Storage Manager. I just haven't found a way to do that.

[orion]

That's odd. Can post the picture of diskmgmt.msc about "500 GB partition"? Is the only partition on this disk? You should delete all of partitions in this disk.

[jbg653]

This is what I am seeing.

[orion]

Well, that shows your "Disk 14" being 561GB. Do your PC equip a special SATA / RAID controller which your "Disk 14" connects? That might prevent you to see native disk info. Or your "Disk 14" internal IC is bad (it means disk reports wrong size). Otherwise, it does not make sense about it.

Anyway, the other way is to remove partitions under your NAS.

• Make sure NAS is running fine. And there is an empty slot.
• ssh using root account into your NAS. Run command "ls -al /dev/sd*".
• Put your "bad disk" into NAS. Wait for a moment. Run the previous command again. You should see a new sd device, let's say /dev/sdx.
• Run command "gdisk /dev/sdx". Delete all of partitions. Write partition back to disk. (You can google gdisk command usage if you are not familiar with it.)

You can see total disk size information with "p" under gdisk. If it shows 500GB, that means your disk internal IC is bad.

[jbg653]

Thank you orion! Your solution was not the solution for me but you got me going in the right direction. Although I have been in IT for over 25 years my exposure to Linux had been very limited. Your solution would have been quite a learning curve for me. However your question regarding an on board Windows RAID controller got me thinking. I do have a High Point RAID card in my system. It was not seeing Disk 14 as part of a RAID array but it dd recognize it as a 5 TB disk. So I configured that disk to be initialized as part of a new RAID array and then I removed it from that array. Windows now recognized the the drive as a 5TB drive and let me initialize and format it.

Shame on ASUS for not offering that functionality in the GUI. Certainly I'm not the first one to want to re-purpose a NAS dive for use in Windows. If it can be done via a command line it can be done via a GUI. No 5 stars for ASUS from me on this one.

[orion]

Nice to know that you find the root cause.
However I don't think it's good to provide UI to destroy partition table. That's too dangerous. Any equipment should accept any disk formats. NAS does and PC should do. The blocked point on your side should be the RAID controller, rather than NAS or PC. Cheers.