Buffalo Forums

Hello.
I connect a USB HDD to my Linkstation LS-WVL and there are some folders that I cannot access from W10. These are some useless folders that I'd like to delete, but either trying to delete or access them, I get a "Windows cannot access \\LS-WVL\path\to\folder. You don't have permission to access \\LS-WVL\path\to\folder. Contact your network administrator to request access."
I suspect the reason these folders are there is that I once interrupted a backup and maybe these folders were locked for writing or smth at that moment.
But I'd like to get rid of them anyway. Is there a way?

It sounds like some file permissions have changed.  Probably a result of your cancelled backup.
Using your Windows PC, you'll have to edit the security permissions of the files and folders in question. 

Right click a folder that you cannot access.  Then go to properties > security.  make sure your username is in the list, and set it for full control.

If that doesn't work, you'll have to go to the advanced section to do it.  Add your account, then select it.  Then put a check for replace the permissions on all child objects (files and subfolders), and hit ok.  You can also make yourself owner, that should help.

If it is alot of data that you cannot access, then I would backup the things you need from that drive.  Copy them to a temp location on a different disk, and then format the disk.

Thanks for your reply.
Unfortunately I can't set the permissions and ownership from windows. I can select my user, but when I hit Apply, it returns an "Access denied", cannot set new owner.
I thought of copying and formatting also, but it's a lot of work and I'd leave it for the last.
I was hoping there's a way to set permissions through the Linkstation interface? I haven't found, but I'm not too familiar with it either. Or some special software? NAS Navigator seems useless though...

Oh, I see what you are doing now.  And yes, it probably won't work that way.
And I bet there's probably data in the folders, but you don't have access to it in this way, and so you probably can't see it or you get the access denied errors.

From Windows, I've never tried to directly access an external usb disk that is connected to the buffalo nas.
I don't know if usb drives can even be shared using the web console, unless they're formatted from the unit itself.

You need to try it with the usb disk directly connected to your pc, and take a look at the permissions there.  And you need to properly remove the disk before you can do that.
Using the buffalo web console, I would stop the usb disk and unmount/remove it.  Then physically disconnect it.
Or, you could just do a regular shutdown from the console.  Both ways should allow you to safely remove the external drive.

Since that drive is part of a backup set, I would guess your Windows account will NOT have permissions to directly access it when it is connected to the buffalo unit.  And that would make sense.  I don't think the buffalo units were designed for that kind of access.

Hello, and thanks for the reply.
The usb drive is formatted to ext3 and I sometimes back up the data from the NAS drives. It's shared, so I can access it from windows as well, over the network.
I know how to unmount the usb disk, I unmount it that way after each time I back up something. I've had no problems reading-writing-deleting normal files on usb disk attached to nas, over network, from windows. It's only with these specific files that I described earlier.
I guess I just need a linux machine then, to check the permissions directly... But I don't have one... Could there be a software for windows, that can do it? I tried an "ext2explore", but it can only read.

It's some kind of permissions thing then.  From the windows side, maybe the permissions have to be forced onto child objects.  In my experience, that has been a very 50/50 thing at best.  When permissions get that messed up, I generally delete and restore from backup.

Since I'm very novice with linux- for this kind of thing, I would try this.  It works as a bootable USB ISO.  I've certainly used it to make buffalo EM boot usb disks anyway.
http://www.system-rescue-cd.org/

Worst case scenario- you could maybe wipe that backup drive, IF you have the data on it stored somewhere else.  As you would have to back it all up again on that disk.