Buffalo Forums

I've done some searching, but this is admittedly outside my usual knowledge zone, and there seem to be a few issues, so I wasn't able to find anything.

I recently got an older quad drive (LS-QL) from a friend to use as a movie server. He says it was working fine for him when he used it a while back. There were 4 1TB drives in it.

First time I fired it up the router page saw it fine, drives, 1, 2, 4 got green lights, 3 got a red light, and the power led was rapidly flashing blue with an occasional purple thrown in.
I played around with reseating 3, switching it with 4, and depending on the time, that drive sometimes got green lit, sometimes red. I finally just pulled out that drive and it's sitting on my desk.

The power led kept moving from flashing blue, flashing blue with occasional purple, flashing blue and purple. The power button wouldn't actually turn off the drive, so I kept having to actually pull the plug. It was also a crap shoot each time I started it up again if my router actually saw it.

I found, in the documentation, how to factory reset the thing, so I tried that. A couple times. The only real effect that it had was that a) I finally (one time) got the power led to stay a solid blue and b) in the setup process and the router page, it changed the name of the drive from the previous owner's given name back to the default. c) some of the times, I was actually able to turn it off using the power button. For the most part though, it just makes more noise at me and leaves the function led flashing blue along with the power led.

I found somewhere in one of the forums that someone else seemed to have been stuck at that point and that running LSUpdater worked, so I tried that. I had hope since it seemed to be doing a lot and working, but then it crashed out during the "finishing" saying it waited 480 seconds for a response from the drive and got none.

During the setup, (I decided to try it just to see what would happen) the best I can do is get stuck at step 4. The screen says to make sure that the light is on in front and back and click next. When I do so, sometimes it said it couldn't find the drive, and sometimes it found it, and I clicked the set up button. It would chug for a minute or two and then dump me back at the step 4 screen. If I click next then, it just keeps taking me through that loop.

So, I'm lost as to what to do next. I'm not sure what to do about drive 3, but I really don't need it quite yet so I don't want to get hung up on that. The previous owner has said to wipe the drives, so I don't care about saving anything that's on them currently.

I'm wondering a) How do I get this thing up and running! b) is this an indication that this may not be the safest place to store my movies?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. If there's any technical info you need about the drive, please ask.

There is no place truly safe for data, always have a backup.

My first thought is that drive might be failing. If you can, connect it to a PC and check on the health of the drive (better yet check them all). Once you replace any failing drives it is probably easier to start over with blank drives rather than worry about trying to re-build the existing array.

Here's a thread about starting over with blank drives:
https://forums.buffalotech.com/index.php?topic=30419.0

But, even when remove that drive I still get the blinking blue light. And my router doesn't even see it all the time.

I'm fine being down a drive. I'm more stuck on not even getting this thing to fire up in the first place. :(

I also don't have a way to connect the drive to a PC anyway. :(

UPDATE:

Now it gets a tiny bit further and says it can't set up the drive because the administrator password is changed.