It all started when I was trying to backup my data on my NAS. I have a Buffalo Linkstation Pro with 250GB drive. Well, the USB drive was recognized but alas, the NAS would not backup to the external USB drive.
So, I figured I'd update my firmware. And, I was lazy. So I downloaded the newest firmware from Buffalo's website. I was sitting in my lazy boy and decided I'd flash the firmware over the wireless. I know! I know! Bad idea. Well, having flashed a lot of things over the years, I got a little complacent. And, I figured, what's the worst that could happen?
Well, the firmware just took forever and wouldn't ever complete. Then I got a little impatient. Who would have thought a firmware would be so large. Anyway, I power cycled the thing... against my better judgement because it would not do anything anymore.
Then, the moment of truth. Power cycle resulted in a nasty beeping post sound and a flashing red light. Looked up the flash code and sure enough, it was a "E04 - flash error." Great!
So, I put it away for the day... I didn't have my USB to SATA adapter at home. Next night, I figured I'd at least recover my data from the drive... I was orignally trying to back it up, right? So I read some articles/posts on the web and it looked like Buffalo might have taken some steps to prevent just plugging in the drive to a linux box. But the version I have, LinkStation Pro (LS-250GL) might not have any issues. I plugged it in to my USB to SATA drive enclosure and then plugged it into my Ubuntu laptop. Three windows popped up... awesome! One of the windows was the mounted partition of the data. So I copied off my data.
Next night, I decided to try this procedure. And, I decided to not go with wireless for this round... duh! Bummer... LS flash program from Buffalo wouldn't detect the NAS. Ran a ping scanner and it wasn't on an alternate IP. Set the subnet to 192.168.11 but still couldn't find the bloody thing. Hit the reset button on the back.... held the reset button on back... held reset on power on... lots of different sounds but no joy. Finally stumbled upon this. Talked about a arm9 box... what's that? Dunno. But, maybe the Linkstation would network boot.
Sure enough, I ran a TFTP server on 192.168.1.1 and power cycled the Linkstation and it took a load from the TFTP server. Then I was able to get the Buffalo firmware updater to "find" the NAS. Then it took the firmware perfectly. It was nice and quick (compared to wireless.) Booted up the NAS, configured a static IP, setup some shares and I'm back in business.
I still need to transfer my data back to the NAS and see if I can get the backup function to work... but at least I didn't have to throw away a perfectly good box.
A big thanks goes out to all those life hackers out there that helped get this thing back running.
Cheers,
Clyde
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