After FW 1.54 Update LS-CHL 1.0 Status LED Flashes Blue Restarts Flashes Blue Restarts etc

[jairo]

Background

I am going to post the problem with my NAS (LS-CHL 1.0EU TL) after searching throughout all major NAS forums without much success. The NAS (Red Web Administration UI) had worked for more than 1 year (since October 2010) without any issues while connected to a router with a DHCP WLAN setting and two PCs running Windows 7 (32bit) until I decided to run a firmware update.

 

After FW 1.54 Update LS-CHL 1.0 Status LED Flashes Blue Restarts Flashes Blue Restarts ETC

For most of last year (2011) the unit had been running FW 1.37 but on December 14th, 2011 I got a message inside the Web Access panel that there was a “New Version of Firmware 1.54” which I went ahead to upgrade. It took more than 24 hours for this update to complete during which I could neither login to Web Administration Tool nor open Shared folders on the NAS over the LAN (at the end there was never a message if it had executed successfully or not). I left the NAS running the next 2 weeks from that point until one day the LED began blinking blue with the NAS making a restarting sound, running for 10 seconds, then a further 50 seconds (normal operation sound ) and then stops before the whole cycle repeats again. At the same time the NAS stopped displaying on the NAS Navigator client (2.43). The client only displays a blank page where I can’t see the NAD at all to make any changesL

 

What I have tried so far

The first procedure I tried was to attempt to initialize the NAS according to the instructions contained in the manual (pg. 43) which failed to materialize.

1. Switched the NAS to “ON” while holding the FUNCTION button for (6 seconds before switching on).
2. As soon as the NAS came to power, I released the FUNCTION button which was flashing blue. On releasing the FUNCTION button, it starts to flash blue.
3. But when I pressed the FUNCTION button again for 1 second and released it (described in the instructions) the FUNCTION button stopped blinking blue then the status LED flashes blue. (Note that the Status LED flashes blue but never turns amber as described in the manual for a normal initialization to take place).
4. The NAS runs for exactly 50 seconds before it restarts (makes the same sound as though waking up on WLAN for the first 10 seconds then runs normal for a further 50 seconds before it repeats the same process time and again).
5. Meanwhile, the NAS does not display on the Buffalo NAS Navigator client.
6. In order to be sure, I repeated the initialization process up to 10 times (including variation of the holding time.of the FUNCTION button.

 

When initialization had failed, I decided to execute the TFTP book procedure according to the instructions described here http://forums.buffalotech.com/t5/Storage/FAQ-3-of-5-TFTP-boot-procedure-please-read-this/td-p/68094

as well as Emergency Mode (EM) here

http://forums.buffalotech.com/t5/Storage/FAQ-1-of-5-EM-Mode-boot-procedures-please-read-this/td-p/68102

. To execute TFTP, I downloaded the latest FW of my NAS (2.56) here

http://www.buffalotech.com/support/downloads, NAS Navigator Client (2.43) as well as the NAS (LS-CHL 1) TFTP Boot Image from here ftp://24.153.165.234/array1/share/nas-recovery/.

 

The results

Unfortunately the TFTP procedure did not yield any positive results as the second screenshot http://forums.buffalotech.com/t5/Storage/FAQ-3-of-5-TFTP-boot-procedure-please-read-this/td-p/68094

mentioned never displayed on the command window. I repeated the TFTP procedure more than 10 times while only seeing a message “accepting requests” with the cursor blinking on the cmd prompt display. Force Firmware Procedure did not come to question because the NAS simply does not boot or become recognized by the NAS Navigator client.

At the end I gave up TFTP then decided to void the warranty, open up the NAS and take out the SATA disk which I connected to my Linux Ubuntu 11.10 and saw that my data was still intact (976GB out of 1TB). I then made a back up of the data as well as both Linux files and Buffalo partitions. Thereafter I deleted the first two partitions (/dev/sda1/ and /dev/sda2).

 

Need your help me Force Firmware Update or painfully forget about this Buffalo 

Since my attempts to enable Web Access using either automatic UPnP or manual setup (internal port 9000[NAS] and external port 9000[router]) over BuffaloNAS.com failed miserably, I think it’s time to make a quick decision. After doing all the necessary research both in NAS Central and Buffalo Forums, I am now at crossroads with these three choices to choose from:

1)      Either someone here points me to the right direction on a way to Force Firmware Update and restore the NAS

2)      or forget about the NAS then as a cost mitigation strategy, buy a USB 2.0 IDE SATA Case (“3.5) which I will connect to the hard disk and operate it like any other external storage disk.

3)      Last but not least to research and buy another NAS from another provider e.g.  WDC (I still need the NAS technology).

 

Hopefully someone in this forum will point me in the right direction.

Thanks

[jairo]

Any suggestions from this community?

[Togmanden]

Hi, I have a problem LinkStation Live LS-CHL it flashes red 7 times, it means that it must be firmware updates, but I can not get in touch with LinkStation, when I press the function button, it flashes constantly blue, some ideas

[coops74]

I was in the same position unable to get the LS to take the files from the TFTP process. I did get it to work with a crossover cable.

[Rudr]

I have the same problem. It all happened after new update..Please help us with th is with this problem.. My backups are on this NAS...

[jairo]

I guess everyone who bought the LS-CHL 1.0 Linkstation needs to do a cost-benefit-analysis then ask self whether the amount of time spend in getting it to work is really worth the gadget's value. Thereafter you will most probably find out that cheap is not always the best and go ahead to buy a relatively more expensive solution from Western Digital or Seagate. I rest my case with Buffallo Technology Products. RIP LS-CHL 1.0 Linkstation.