My linkStation is in a weird state. It starts fine, requests its IP address from my router (I see it does as the IP pops up in the router list when it starts). The power and network leds blink as their should when booting and are steady once up, the network one blinking when there is traffic, it is shutting down when the button is pressed for a couple of seconds and I can hear the hard drive powering up and down.
However I can't connect to it in any shape or form. The web UI doesn't respond. The Mac Buffalo NAS navigator sometimes (not always) finds it, displays a weird hostname (LS-GL-EMA49) and its IP, subnet and mac address. But that's it: it can't get the firmware version nor do anything from there. The Windows NAS utility is even more useless: it can never find it.
I've gone in there with nmap, scanning the IP address and it is telling me that the LinkStation is up and running, on the network, but that all the ports are closed. With no port open whatsoever I'm not surprised the utilities can't get to it.
So far I've tried:
- putting it on a different network, also DHCP. Nada.
- Connecting it directly to my Mac, using the 192.168.11.150. It's there, but all ports are closed.
- Pressing the button in the back for 10 seconds, until the linkstation chimes a little music.
- try the three previous network again
- restarting it a number of times
At this point I'm running out of ideas. This linkstation worked fine, I used it to make a backup of some data and then stored it for 3 months. I would like to get that data back now, pretty please, preferably without opening the case!
Any hope of getting this thing to start up again?
It is a Buffalo LinkStation LS-500GL, bought in the UK (if it makes a difference). I don't know what firmware it is running as I can't look, but it is the original one as I never upgraded it for sure.
Thanks for your help.