To whoever is reading this,
Recently I have bought a Buffalo Linkstation LS-QVL off a 2nd hand site. After booting it up with brand new 4 x 4TB Toshiba hard drives, all I got was 6 red flashes.
Here is how I fixed it:
You will need these things:
A computer. I used a laptop..having both wireless and wired connections was helpful. Dual wired would probably work too, or just one, but you need to change the IP, as I will explain.
The TFTP Boot Recovery program. Download here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1svyb9LFUq7VBdD9KFJ66TZ5qMgI_X59p?usp=sharingThe firmware updater for your model. Obtain from Buffalo:
https://www.buffalo-technology.com/service-support/downloads/software-firmware-updates/ then type the model in - LS QVL.
Download NASNavigator from Buffalo as well.
Ethernet cord, any old patch cable will do.
Patience of a saint, a little luck and probably about a 1/2 hour to get it up and running now that I know what I am doing.
Prep: Turn off the Buffalo Linkstation LS-QVL with all your harddrives installed. Laptop turned on and connected to wireless. Ethernet cord connected to LAN1 on Linkstation, the other end to LAN port of laptop.
Step 1: Download TFTP Boot Recovery EXE
Step 2: Download latest firmware for Buffalo Linkstation LS-QVL from Buffalo website. Extract it to a folder as well.
Step 3: In the firmware updater folder, in my case it was called ls_series-v175, you will see two particular files. Copy, do not move, initrd.img and uImage.img to another folder.
Step 4: Rename initrd.img to initrd.zip and rename uImage.img to uImage.zip
Step 5: Go to this page:
http://buffalo.nas-central.org/wiki/Firmware_update Site is down but I found the archive here -(
https://web.archive.org/web/20180720224309/http://buffalo.nas-central.org/wiki/Firmware_update) and go to the bottom. There are four passwords in the section called Password Summary. You will need these to extract the files. Extract initrd.buffalo from the first file. I tried each of the passwords, in my case, the third one worked. In the second file, extract uimage-88f6281.buffalo
Step 6: Place both files in TFTP Boot Recovery folder.
Step 7: Configure LAN port of laptop to 192.168.11.1, subnet 255.255.255.0. The rest can be blank.
Step 8: Launch TFTP Boot.exe
Step 9: Turn on your Buffalo Linkstation LS-QVL
Step 10: When your Linkstation is flashing the 6 red flashes, press on the function button once
Step 10: You will see on the command window of the TFTP Boot program that those two files were transferred.
Step 11: Wait. It should reboot after 30 seconds or so. Give it a minute, it seems to take a few moments to boot up. The power switch LED should turn blue and no longer red flashes.
Step 12: Extract ls_series-v175 files. Launch TSUpdater.exe. The NAS should be discoverable at this point. Click update. You should get an error saying No Partition found. Close updater.
Step 13: Edit TSUpdater.ini. Where it says NoFormatting = 1, change it to NoFormatting = 0
Step 14: Launch TSUpdater. Click Update. Drives should be formatting now and firmware will be uploaded after formatting is done. This will take a few minutes. LED finally changes to blue from red. Almost done!
Step 15: Open NASNavigator. Should see the NAS there, at this point you can add a share, or launch the Web interface. I launched the web interface, and was greeted by it all in Japanese. Yay! Something else to fix! Its a bug apparently I found out.
Step 16: Type in admin for username, and password for password. Go to the 4th tab, then scroll down. Expand the 3rd tab, then select "ENGLISH".
Step 17: Do a little dance and enjoy your renewed NAS.