N7 works correctly i.e. 1. can map LS220, 2. can see in Network section by name, 3. SMB is OFF & SMBv2 is on
Any suggestions as to why N7 is happy with either SMB or SMBv2 but LPT only works with SMB?
From Bob's description of his issue- it sounds like buggy firmware to me. From the 1.73 release notes, they did do some more patching.
Sounds to me like SMB 2.x is not turned on from the Linkstation (even though it might say it is in the console), and the N7 machine is only accessing it with SMB 1.x. I seem to remember encountering a similar problem with SMB 2.x, right around the time I stopped using that model, it may have been around firmware 1.70. I do recall that older versions did not have SMB 2.x on by default. Even after the firmware update, maybe the setting is still off.
Check the console and see what version of SMB it is set for. Set it for only SMB 2.x
Then, disable SMB 1.x on the N7 PC. Leave just the SMB 2.x on, and reboot.
I would clear your dns entries and also your netbios/wins entries on the pc, before rebooting.
nbtstat -R
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /registerdns
If you can't access it with only SMB 2.x only, then the firmware is definitely the culprit.
additional question: how are you mapping? by machine name? or by IP address?
If they're not on the same subnet, you might have some problems mapping by wins/netbios name.
I know with Oracle VirtualBox on windows, you definitely have to map it by IP address. WINS/netbios doesn't work.
Try the workaround that Bob mentioned, and see if that helps.
When I used a linkstation, I tried the SMB 2.x. It was just too slow, so I wound up dropping it back to SMB 1.1
The firmware updates according to Buffalo, patch the exploits in that protocol, to where it shouldn't be a security risk.
MS on the other hand on the windows side- unknown.
Either way: You're going to take a good 30-40% hit in performance. My write speeds dropped from a good 45MB/sec to 30MB/sec. I was writing some big files. Maybe this isn't an issue for other users.