No front LEDs or Fan, only rear green LED (OOW Pre-2014 LS441DE) after HDD swaps

[kanidrive]

Its been awhile since I've needed to post to a forum for help, especially this one. I'll try to be as detailed as possible as to what led up to my current situation, so that maybe it'll trigger some ideas, because I am currently stumped. I did a few things to this old unit for the first time in about 5 years or so to try to keep it alive and chuggin'. I recall having some kind of a similar issue with the device when I first got bought it, but I don't recall having no spinning fan... Its been a long time ago though, and I have no recollection of how it solved it, either (if its even the same issue).

I have not yet progressed to attempting any kind of Telnet or TFTP, but perhaps that is what it will take. That said, without any power indication, I'm not sure if that's the answer. Hopefully someone here can help me out?

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My old "bought-refurbished-in-2014 LS441DE" was working well, still on the original firmware (the last update available from a few years ago), but I recently attempted to change clean up the decade+ old fan by removing it and blowing it out with Electronics Cleaner spray as I was going to finally upgrade the HDDs that were running low on space.

I tried to test that everything was working before I put it all back together. At first, I wanted to test if another fan with the same 3-pin connector and 0.01Amps more current draw would work in "The Old Buffalo".

I had not yet put the drives back in, as I had pulled them all out and set them aside while I did the fan cleaning and testing.

The first test I did was to power on the Buffalo LinkStation LS441DE with the old fan plugged in. There was a red LED on the front, but it seemingly powered up fine, and the old fan was spinning for a few minutes just fine. After a few minutes though, the fan stopped and the unit seemingly did an auto shutdown. I assume this is because there were no drives installed and it had nothing to do. 1st test passed!

The 2nd test I did was to power on the Buffalo LinkStation LS441DE with NO fan plugged in.
Again, there was a red LED on the front, but it seemingly powered up fine, there was the red LED again, but without a fan plugged in, nor any drives. Not sure if this is a "pass" or not, but everything seemed normal thus far.

The 3rd test I did was to power on the Buffalo LinkStation LS441DE with the NEW fan plugged in. The red LED on the front was on again. The NEW fan was spinning for a maybe 1 minute. After that, the NEW fan stopped and the unit seemed to do another auto shutdown. While the length of time seemed a bit shorter before the auto shutdown + fan stoppage happened when the NEW fan was tested, everything seems ok. The idea of this test being that if I were ever in a pinch, I would have a backup fan I could use until I could get a proper replacement. The idea of the fan going bad on this unit haunted me for a long time as a possible reason it might stop working (Ironically...). But I would say this 3rd test was a PASS.

So as a final 4th test, I hooked the OLD fan back up again, making sure it would still work before I put it all back together and started adding the new HDDs I got for it. Plugged everything up, pushed the power button aaaaaaaaand....

Just a tiny little "jerk" of the fan. But no "spin". Like it was only THINKING about spinning, but just... stopped as soon as I started. No front LEDs at all this time, either. (Other than the Green LED in the back when its plugged in)

So, that's bad... and I've more or less been stuck here in this state for awhile now, after no change when I have tried a few different things.

I've now tried to:
- Leave the Unit unplugged for while, then plug in
- Leave the unit powered off for awhile, while still plugged in
- Put the old drives back in
- Put a new "blank" drive (unpartitioned, post-"DISKPART + clean") back in
- Connect back to the network with the RJ45 port (I haven't tried any kind of TFTP or Telnet... yet...)

The fan will only do its "jerk" whenever I completely unplug the unit for a few seconds or more, and then press the power button. If I leave it plugged in for a long time and don't press the power button, it will do the "jerk" for 1/100th of a spin again, but it will never move at all again until I unplug for awhile, and then the moment I press the power button.

I'm kind of stumped now. I'm not sure where to go from here. I guess I might have to check and see if TFTP/Telnet works as I hope someone from this forum responds with the "forehead slapping" simple solution I'm overlooking or wasn't aware of.

I'm hoping its not something electrical, but it seems like it is. I've seen a few devices with these similar symptoms with the fan "bumping" and then nothing else ever happens.... so I might have fried it someone, but maybe not?

Here's to hoping someone in here can save the day!

[nafcom]

not sure what procedure you followed for the diskswap but here is how to do it:
e correct video for upgrading Buffalo Linkstation NASes to bigger HDDs is this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOwP_eiBEr8

[kanidrive]

Thanks for the reply, but I'm struggling to just get power to come back on the unit, right now. Is there a known auto-shutdown / protection mode for this unit that needs to be reset? I cannot tell if the unit is just damaged or its in some kind of a protection mode that needs to be reset (perhaps through ssh, telnet or tftp)?

The only thing it does right now, after being unplugged and powered down, with a single blank/wiped HDD in slot 1 is "jerk" the fan blades for a short and brief moment and the LED on the RJ45 port gives a single "green flash" when I try to plug in back in and press the Power button.

I still haven't gotten around to trying to get into a "shell" via ssh, telnet or tftp or anything. It's been so long since I did any of that (2014) I have forgotten the "trick" to it. Is it just as easy as setting up telnet or ssh and logging in as root? is there a special username/password combo? Can tftp be of any use in the state its currently in?

I'm basically just looking for any way to get a factory reset and/or "recovery shell" to start from scratch. I was fortunately able to back everything up before I tried to swap the drives, which is great and all, but now I need to offload all that data back onto the new drives if (and hopefully when) I am able to bring the LS441DE back to a working state.

Any insights and suggestions are appreciated.

[nafcom]

I have never heard of any protection mode feature of those NAS enclosures so in my book, I would consider the unit bricked.

However did you consider reaching out to Buffalo Tech Support? While in most countries abroad, they closed down business, the US one still has ways to be contacted:

Please contact them via https://buffalotech.com/support, enter your unit's serial number

Support still seems to be reliable, I had to manually email them to verify my account here on the forums, to confirm that I am a human, so that I am able to answer you.
The turnaround time was within the same day. :)

If the Support Contact Form above appears to be broken, you can also email them via support[at]buffalotech.com instead. Please supply your serial number when emailing them directly.

Hope this will be helpful to you.