Ok, I want to chime in on this...... Because I had an extremely frustrating afternoon trying to do just this... Take my old 500 and replace them with 1TB..... So to save anyone who reads this a ton of time, here it goes. Do not replace all four at once... This does not work. The Firmware is in this model and I am assuming all of the LS-QL Series is indeed embedded on the RAID drives. I tried to using the methods laid out in Documents/Posts
Topic: FAQ (1 of 5): EM Mode boot procedures
Topic: FAQ (2 of 5): Force Firmware update procedure
Topic: FAQ (3 of 5): TFTP boot procedure
and
Recover a non working "bricked" Linkstation in buffalo's wiki
So things that I ran into.
1.) Had an extremely hard time getting the system in EM with new drives in. old drive no problem
2.) Could never get the system to reset to default, thus it held its old IP address, which was not keep in the firmware on the drives but on a BIOS chip on the main circuit board.
3.) I continually go the 6 Red Blinks on the power LED, If I hit the Function button, it would stop the whole system, and give a solid blue, but no IP assigned to the box so you could not get to it from any network, old setting or default settings or EM Mode settings.
4.) If you did the get the Function button to respond it would send the whole system into copy from USB mode.....
5.) even after messing with a ton of combinations of punching power button, removing power, and function button still did not brick box. Put old drive back in and the Box came right back up.
OK so what worked, YES WORKED was exactly what the person who asked this question suggested.
I swapped out one drive at a time as if the system had gone bad... Went to the Disk Management section of the Buffalo menu, it said that one of the drives had been replaced and asked me to re-establish the RAID. Did that, and the after it finished that it started "Repairing RAID Array 1" on its own. This took about 45 minutes.. It showed the size of the drive it was adding to the system correctly, and it added the extra amount of room for the size of the drive to the space available when it was done repairing the RAID. So just in case anyone one else wants to do this. I replace the Hitachi Deskstar HDP725050GLA360 500GB AUG-2009 with Western Digital WD1003FZEX 1TB 03 May 2014 One other thing to mention, I started with drive 4 and went backward 3,2,1 not sure it that had anything to do with the success but thought it was worth mentioning.
I took all my data off this RAID before I did this because I didn't want to chance it, which you should not either, but it seemed based on the way it reacted that it would have kept any previous data that was on the old RAID drive. So since these models are way out of warranty, go head upgrade, don't leave old tech for the trash dump, reuse, repurpose and enjoy.
I created this document to help anyone else.
Step 1: Turn off RAID Box (do not turn power off to the box)
A. Log into Buffalo LinkStation LQ-QL083
B. Left Click “Maintenance” in the menu
C. Left Click on this “Restart” in the menu
D. Left Click on “Apply” On Shutdown the LinkStation
Step 2: Replace Drive 4 (Replace in Backward order one at a time not all at once)
A. Use black arm latch to pull out drive
B. Take out all the four screws underneath
C. Put in and screw down the new drive
Step 3: Fix Error
A. Log into Buffalo LinkStation LQ-QL083
B. You will get a Warning “Error has occurred in RAID Array1”
C. Click on this Warning it will take you to “Disk Management”
D. Select the Disk that is open that you just replaced. (Check box that is white)
E. Then the grey out “Restructure RAID Array” will Become active
F. Left Click on “Restructure RAID Array”
G. You will get a message
“Restructure RAID Array
Any data on the replacement disk will be overwritten rebuild the array.
This process cannot be cancelled once started.
Are you sure you want to continue?”
H. Left Click “OK”
I. This will give you “Please Confirm Request” Page
J. Type in the “Confirmation Number” into the “Entry” box
K. Left Click “Apply”
L. You will then get a “Rebuilding RAID Array” Page.
(Drive Green LED’s on LinkStation Flicker wildly, power LED Flicker Alternating Blue- Red at a slower pace)
This took me about 4 minutes and 42 seconds for each round/drive.
M. Left Click on “Continue”
Step 4: Repairing RAID Array1)
A. LinkStation should reload the “Home” page, but you may have to log back in first.
B. You will get a message (Repairing RAID Array1)
C. Left Click on this It will take you to a “RAID Array Information” Which will show you the Status of the Array being Repaired
D. You watch it if you want. I tended to come in and reload in and check this about every 30 minutes to make sure it was working. I personally setup under Maintenance my email server and address to get Mail Notifications in doing this I got an email when it started and one when it finished. Taking the times on these Each round/drive took 7 hours, yes 7 hours
a. 4:31 PM to 11:29 PM - 7 Hours
b. 1:56 PM to 9:07 PM – 7 Hours 11 Minutes
c. 2:40 PM to 9:38 PM – 6 Hours 58 Minutes
d. 12:19 AM to 7:33 AM - 7 Hours 14 Minutes
E. Might end up being longer depending on how big the replacement hard drives and the original hard drives were.
F. I left a set of test files on the RAID, and the system after all of this kept the files, I wouldn’t suggest it, but it does seem to keep all data if you do this.
Step 5: Resetting the RAID to fix capacity
A. "Disk Management"
B. Click on “Orange Tool/Arrow icon” in front of “RAID Array1”
C. RAID Settings
D. Left Click Change RAID Array get a message
Remove RAID Array,
Data stored on the target disks will be deleted.
This process cannot be cancelled once started.
Are you sure you want to continue?
E. Left Click “OK”
F. Please Confirm Request Page comes up type in the number given and left click “Apply”
G. Get a Screen “Changing RAID” this took 3 Minutes and 15 seconds
When Finished it went back to the “Home” Screen showed that all drives were being used 0%
HDD Space Used
Disk 1
0.00 GB / 923.76 GB (0.00 %)
Disk 2
0.00 GB / 923.76 GB (0.00 %)
Disk 3
0.00 GB / 923.76 GB (0.00 %)
Disk 4
0.00 GB / 923.76 GB (0.00 %)
H. Left Click on “Disk Management”
I. Left Click on RAID SETUP
J. Left Click on “Orange Tool/Arrow icon” in front of “RAID Array1”
K. Choose your Raid Mode/Structure (Pretty drawings that explanation how and what RAID does and the layouts that it creates on the drives)
L. Make sure your drives are selected
M. Left Click on “Setup RAID Array”
N. You get a message
Remove RAID Array,
Data stored on the target disks will be deleted.
This process cannot be cancelled once started.
Are you sure you want to continue?
O. Left Click "OK"
P. Please Confirm Request Page comes up type in the number given and left click “Apply”
(This took way shorter than I thought it would.
10:51:25 - 10:54:10 2 minutes and 45 seconds)
Q. Left Click “Continue”
R. And Wahla (Voila!) The Array is now full size for the drives that are in place. I can confirm that if you had Data on the system it will be erased in this last step, so backup if you don’t want to lose anything.
OLD view
HDD Space Used
RAID Array 1
0.00 GB / 1337.32 GB (0.00 %)
NEW view
HDD Space Used
RAID Array 1
0.00 GB / 2771.52 GB (0.00 %)
Hope this helps everyone.
For those who are experts/highly experience and that interested: While doing this I ran across this article on “5 Tips to speed up Linux software RAID Rebuilding and Re-Syncing”
https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-ra ... speed.html
These are great tips, and might be able to be applied to this box to fix the slowness of this box and slowness of the 7-hour rebuild process. Don’t know how anyone's client can expect to be down 7 or more hours while their main data box is off line…..
:up:
The Quazi One
quazione@yahoo.com
“ Sting theory states: you should always buy in pairs”
