new disks, cant install firmware

[ryanp]

Got a ts-x8.0tl/r5 that we had to trash the drives and are trying to rebuild it. Ran into the no initialization file issue.

-Tried building a INIT USB drive from my TS3410 but the ts-x8.0tl/r5 doesn't have the USB/BOOT switch so can't test that.
-TSUpdater fails, even in debug mode
-All guides online seem to be about the 5400 and 5800. tried using them but kept hitting dead ends.

I'm trying to figure out how to install the appropriate boot files on this thing, do any of you have any ideas?

Some possible hints
-Shows up in navigator
-showing firmware error
-can not access web GUI
-seems fully booted, just can't access
-Put drives in PC and insured they did not have a partition. later created partitions and deleted them to clear anything I couldn't see

Thanks for any help you can give

[1000001101000]

This device is actually easier than most of those other devices since it has built in NAND flash which it boots from if it can't boot from a drive.

To install the firmware on this device simply insert 4 blank drives and power on. After ~10 minutes it will finish booting into em mode. From there you should be able finish the install using tsupdater in debug mode:

https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Restoring_Stock_Firmware_without_TFTP

[ryanp]

I've been messing with this all day, your tutorial has got me from failing at the start of the format to the end of the format. I did throw all 3 of the uImage.buffalo files on the drive which might be the issue. did you ever have the issue with it failing to format at 100%?

[1000001101000]

There are a couple of reasons I've seen for it stopping at that point.
The first that come to mind are:
1. You don't have enough drives installed (try with all 4)
2. One of the drives is bad
3. The drives didn't start blank and it is confused by existing RAID partitions
4. The drives are too small (unlikely)

Fortunately, this device has a serial port on the front that outputs the console data which tells you exactly what the problem is.

[ryanp]

brilliant!

Spot on with 2 points, 1 drive had old data on it and 1 wouldn't spin. Was only dealing with drive 1 since I read that somewhere. I did take a DB9 m to DB9 F cable with a gender bender to try to read the boot logs but didn't see anything (probably one of the 2 are bad since i found them in a pile of junk).

Thanks for your help, my terastation is working! Do you happen to know what size disks it will take? I got some WD red 4Ts I could fill it with (right now, I was just testing with some junk 1T from a decommissioned server.

[1000001101000]

Great!

There are some other threads on here asking more or less the same question. I believe folks have used larger drives without issues in this model.

There's a 16TB volume limit, but there's now way to hit that with 4tb drives so you should be fine.