Buffalo NAS-Central Forums

Here are my notes regarding replacing the WD 1TB drives with Seagate ST32000542AS drives. They may help somebody who attempts the same task and is frustrated with some of the instructions found on the web. Note that this was done on a brand new box that initially shipped with two 1TB drives.

I used these instructions as a base:

http://buffalo.nas-central.org/index.ph ... om_scratch

- set ip on computer to 192.168.11.1

- disable windows firewall and anti virus

- start TFTP (TFTP Boot.exe)

- hold down function buttton for 5 secs while turning unit on.

- if the files are not pulled as soon as the box finishes its blue light flashes and the red light turns on, hold down the function button again for a few seconds and it might pull the files (it did in my case every time).

- wait until the blue light goes steady. It may take a few minutes, mine even rebooted in the mean time and went to steady again. So be patient.

- Start NasNavi to confirm that the LS-WXL is found

- Now go to the firmware update directory

- change the LSUpdater.ini after backing it up first by adding or modifying (NOTE: NoFormatting=0 indicates that the drives will be reformatted, i.e DELETING all the data):

VersionCheck = 0
NoFormatting = 0

[specialflags]
debug = 1

- Change the computer's IP address to 169.254.110.4 with a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0

- invoke LSUpdater.exe (in my case for firmware 1.37)

- On the window that appears click the two rings icon in the top left hand corner

- Check debug in the new window

- Check all flags including rebuild partition table if you want to rebuild the array.

- If you get the following message: could not confirm if the partition exists make sure that your ini was updated correctly, i.e. with NoFormatting = 0

- Running updater and confirming the formatting intention may result in the following message after format: *LinkStation has booted up as an emergency mode. Updating may be failure.*

- At this point, change your computer's network configuration back to normal.

- Try to simply reboot the LinkStation again and confirm it boots up and the power light goes steady.

- After reboot, the language in my case had changed to Japanese.

- To change language click second tab from the right (System)
Click first subtab from left (Settings)
Click third bar from top, or lowest bar (Language)
Click the bottom button (modify)
Change display and Windows languages to whatever and then click left button (Save)


Note that I had to do a second TFTP load because the initial format of my 2TB Seagate drives failed. After it rebooted (by itself) it completed the format and from then on everything (except the language part) was fine.

I just ran some benchmarks using a Win 7 professional ISO image. The M2NL refers to the Sans Digital M2NL. It was quite interesting to observe the performance variations of the various copy programs.

file: en_windows_7_professional_x64_dvd_x15-65805.iso
size: 3,075.3 MB

FastCopy
LS-WXL W 146.50 secs Buffer: 64MB Framesize: 1518 20.99MB/s
LS-WXL W 152.99 secs Buffer: 64MB Framesize: 1518 20.10MB/s using OS buffer
LS-WXL R 98.95 secs Buffer: 64MB Framesize: 1518 31.08MB/s using OS buffer
LS-WXL W 222.46 secs Buffer: 64MB Framesize: 4102 13.82MB/s
LS-WXL R 121.63 secs Buffer: 64MB Framesize: 4102 25.28MB/s using OS buffer
LS-WXL W 222.80 secs Buffer: 64MB Framesize: 7422 13.80MB/s
LS-WXL R 121.91 secs Buffer: 64MB Framesize: 7422 25.21MB/s using OS buffer
LS-WXL W 241.86 secs Buffer: 64MB Framesize: 9694 12.72MB/s
LS-WXL R 123.55 secs Buffer: 64MB Framesize: 9694 24.89MB/s using OS buffer
M2NL W 298.96 secs Buffer: 64MB Framesize: Dflt 10.29MB/s
M2NL W 289.65 secs Buffer: 64MB Framesize: Dflt 10.62MB/s using OS buffer
M2NL R 197.54 secs Buffer: 64MB Framesize: Dflt 15.57MB/s using OS buffer

*Note that FastCopy cannot read from both NAS without network errors unless the "use OS buffer" option is specified.

Robocopy
LS-WXL W 303.00 secs Framesize: 1518 10.15MB/s
LS-WXL R 332.00 secs Framesize: 9694 9.26MB/s
M2NL W 315.00 secs Framesize: Dflt 9.76MB/s
M2NL R 208.00 secs Framesize: Dflt 14.78MB/s

TeraCopy
LS-WXL W 147.76 secs Buffer: 64MB Framesize: 1518 20.82MB/s
LS-WXL R 165.00 secs Buffer: 64MB Framesize: 1518 18.63MB/s
M2NL W 294.92 secs Buffer: 64MB Framesize: Dflt 10.43MB/s

*Note that TeraCopy is unable to read the file from the M2NL without lots of network errors.

One more important comment. If you decide to use this particular family of drives (i.e. Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS 2TB) then you may have acquired drives using the CC34 firmware.

This firmware should be updated but noted that drives with this newer firmware delivered somewhat slower performance. However, the increased reliability should compensate for the loss easily.

Here is a blog with excellent suggestions on that process as the normal Seagate utility will not upgrade CC34 drives in most cases. It didn't in mine and I had to force it.

http://niallbest.com/seagate-2tb-st3200 ... e-upgrade/

Next, I discovered that the firmware upgrade turned on Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) and set it to its lowest level (128). This results in a quiet drive but also means the slowest drive performance.

I installed the evaluation version of HD Tune as it allows the changing of these settings. I set the drive to its highest performance (still with AAM enabled) and performance increased by about 20%.

EDIT: If these drives are used in a RAID configuration then Time-Limited Error Recovery (TLER) becomes an issue.

Use smartmontools to address it (works in Linux and Windows).

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki

By entering: you can see the switch state.

Entering sets the error recovery timeout for read and write to 7 seconds.

Hi,

I bought a LS-WXL on ebay and I am trying to install two new drives.

I have set the ip of my computer to 192.168.11.1 and started the tftp sever making sure it says listening on 192.168.11.1. But the NAS doesn't seem to be picking up the tftp server. I have tried putting the power cable in, holding the fuction button then turning the switch on. When I do that, the NAS starts with one blue light flashing with no fans or HD then after 60secs or so it will go to two blue lights flashing with fans and HD then it will going into the cycle below.

If I hold the fuction button after turning the switch on it will power with HD and fans, blue flashing light then red light for a few secs and will repeat.

I'm not sure whats going on.

Thanks