Hi

So the situation is as follows:

I have a linux based NAS drive (WD Sharespace). Recently i tried to update the Firmware through the built in updater which for some reason failed and broke the NAS. Customer support has been less than useful so far so i am hoping someone here might have some ideas.

Good things:
The nas is up and running, the hard disks are fine and so is all my data, network connection is up and the os is running. I know this because the built-in twonky media server is up and running and i can still play my media on my tv/pc via this media server. I can also ping the ip address successfully.

Bad things:
The SSH (and telnet) server, the web interface and the NFS/portmapper services are all down. I cannot connect via windows networking, ssh or http to the nas config (although i can connect to the twonky config on port 9000). I have also tried "mount -t nfs 10.0.0.100:/Public /mnt/nas", ssh and wget from a linux live cd but i am getting no route to host and other similar errors. Ping works fine from linux as does wget on port 9000 (twonky).

Although i have all my important files safely backed up there are still files on the nas that i would rather not lose (too big for backup, would require a second nas and that just wasnt in my budget).


Solutions?
Some kind of hack via twonky to get ssh up and running?

Or some other commands from the linux live cd that i could try? never done much with linux desktop networking before so my knowledge is somewhat lacking in this area.

Some way to get the files i want off the nas (besides pulling the disks out, sticking them in my pc and rebuilding the raid). Then the disks can be formatted and with empty disks the nas would reset itself completely restoring the OS. As this would be very time-consuming its a last resort.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Thomas

site | http://thomassmart.com / http://thomassmart.hk
blog | http://weblog.thomassmart.com
 

According to the userguide holding the reset button for 7 seconds should reset all the network settings without erasing your data*

* I Do not have one of these units & have not tried so I accept no liability etc.

Computers are like Air conditioners:-
Both stop working when you open Windows

it does indeed reset all the settings, but it does not restart crashed services:(

i did try to reset and it was reset as the ip address was then given by the router instead of being static. But services were still unreachable.
 

site | http://thomassmart.com / http://thomassmart.hk
blog | http://weblog.thomassmart.com
 

It sounds like you may need a full default then but this will also erase your data so you would need to back it up first.

Maybe punting in a temporary HD mech and defaulting will get you back to a working system.

again this is pure guess work.
 

A Maintenance contract is essential, not a Luxury.
Do things on the cheap & it will cost you dear

maybe the following is of help:

se Fedora to recover data on hard drives from a WD ShareSpace 4TB NAS?
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/use-fedora-to-recover-data-on-hard-drives-from-a-wd-sharespace-4tb-nas-854458/

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

i read about the linux fix, but if i have to go through the effort of ripping out the drives and installing linux. not to mention copying all that data to a secondary set of disks then i am just going to get a nice esata disk bay, stick the disks in there and throw the nas case away. Just use it as an external disk instead.

Will probably do that this weekend, the NAS has been a bit of a headache to be honest. a 1gb promised nas that barely reaches 8mb on a good day with a 30 cm network cable. :/

site | http://thomassmart.com / http://thomassmart.hk
blog | http://weblog.thomassmart.com
 

>>>...with a 30 cm network cable. :/ <<<

That rang a bell.  Try a longer cable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_physical_layer#Minimum_cable_lengths


That won't fix the problem you have now, but it may improve/restore the usable bandwidth once you get the thing fixed/hacked.
 

the 30cm one was just a test with a shorter cable to see if it was better, believing that the shorter the better.

when i bought it i tried all kinds of sizes and messed around with jumbo frames and a bunch of other things. scouring the internet i found many others with the same problem.

the wd sharespace is just a shit nas if you expect speed and/or reliability. but then for that price i guess you  cant expect much :)

site | http://thomassmart.com / http://thomassmart.hk
blog | http://weblog.thomassmart.com
 

Update

I stuck the 4 disks in a 4 bay disk array and plugged it into my linux laptop. it found the disks right away without any effort. Can access all the files :)

i can also access what seems to be the OS disk, containing the full nas OS. Wondering what i could do to get it to boot properly in the nas again and launch the services?

the init.d still has all the required scripts for the services so not sure what could be causing them not to launch on boot :/
 

site | http://thomassmart.com / http://thomassmart.hk
blog | http://weblog.thomassmart.com
 

Your initial message suggests that the hardware flash in the nas box is toast.  I'd expect all the drives to be okay.

The question is, how do you bootstrap the nas box into the firmware update, so it can complete that?

 

the answer is: spend 2 days copying all the data off, zero the disks, put them back in the nas. this makes it fully reset itself to original store settings.

seems to be the only option, i could not get it to reset with just the disk access. had to empty it :/

site | http://thomassmart.com / http://thomassmart.hk
blog | http://weblog.thomassmart.com