Duo Pro USB troubles - help please! SOLVED

[msmith71]

Hi all,

I'm having a strange problem with my Linkstation Duo Pro NAS (LS-WVL/E). I had two 500MB hard drives in the unit in a RAID1 configuration. One crashed, so I needed to replace it. While I was at it, I decided to upgrade to two 1TB drives. First, I backed up the remaining drive to an external USB drive, formatted with XFS. The backup succeeded, and I was able to browse the USB drive and see the files. All's well so far.

I removed the two 500MB drives and put in the first 1 TB drive. I hit the Function key to transfer the OS onto the drive. I then inserted the other 1 TB drive and formatted it. I now had two 1 TB drives in normal mode. I formed a RAID1, which worked fine.

I now want to transfer the data from the external USB HDD back to the new NAS drives.

But here's the weird part... I am unable to mount the external USB drive anymore! When I hook up the external drive, the LS-WVL never recognizes it... it never even acknowledges that it's there. The System/Storage screen shows the USB as "Disconnected". I've tried unplugging the USB and plugging it back in, I've tried rebooting, etc. Nothing works.

What else is weird here is that if I take both of the new 1 TB drives out and put the old 500 MB drive in, when the system boots up, I can plug in the external USB drive and the LS-WVL recognizes it just fine again. It almost seems like when the OS was written onto the new drives, something was goofy with the USB driver or something.

Any ideas as to what the heck is going on here? I'm REALLY frustrated! I don't know much about what is going on "behind the scenes" with this unit, but I'm hoping some of you may have some ideas for me.

thanks!
Michael

p.s., I'm on the latest firmware (1.65)

[msmith71]

Resolved - Buffalo tech support was great - thanks, guys! In case anybody runs into a similar problem, here's what we did to resolve this.

I forced a firmware update to the 1.65 level (same as I was using), but did it with the Debug flag set to true. I think there are other threads explaining how to do this. Make sure you read them carefully, though! The Debug flag is important, as is this next part...

Before starting the firmware update, if you right click on the title bar, you get a popup that lets you pull up a debug screen. From there, you can set some additional options for the firmware flash, including wiping out user options and such. Sorry I don't remember more than this, but this was an important step so make sure you figure it out if you're running into trouble like mine. (I had already tried to force the firmware update once, but didn't do this step... as a result, my problem remained after the flash was done.) After setting the firmware updater to basically wipe out everything, I let it do its thing. It took about 30 minutes to perform the operation, but when it was done, the USB port on my LS-WVL/E was working again.

I think what might have originally happened was something like this: I put a new 1TB drive into the LS and hit the function button to transfer the OS over. However, I am not sure if I waited long enough before declaring it "done". You have to wait until the power light goes back to steady blue. If it is still flashing, DON'T STOP IT/SHUT IT DOWN, even if the web service is responding. I suspect that I might have seen the blue light and gone on to other tasks (such as shutting down the LS and adding another drive) before the entire OS was transferred. As a result, my USB drive functionality was crippled. (It wouldn't read ANY USB device, not just my external disk).

Anyway, just thought I'd share what happened. Maybe it'll help somebody else.

Michael