Buffalo NAS-Central Forums

The LinkStation Mini case turned out to be pretty easy to take apart. I used a 1 inch flexible putty knife. There's a slot in the top case between the USB port and the Ethernet port. You insert the putty knife 1/4 inch, and then rotate the knife to lever the back of the case out, so that the top of the case can be pulled up. Then you can carefully remove the top case.

There are no screws or tape or anything, it's just the parts you see here. The aluminum side rails have little bumps that hook into the drives where the screws would normally go.

If you detach the drives from the motherboard be sure to remember which one goes where. If you swap them by mistake (like I did) it doesn't appear to cause damage -- all that happens is that the LinkStation doesn't boot. Swapping them back seemed to make everything work again.

I'm sorry that the images are so bad -- I dropped my camera in the water and it hasn't been right since.

Still I hope these are good enough for people to figure out the parts list or whatever.





Update: Here are some better pictures

Here are some slightly better pictures.

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Front



Front detail

wow, cool

Can you take closer shots of the two memory chips that are between the CPU and Hard Drive connector. (or I just suppose read out the text on the top of the chips)?

_________________
-Ramuk

LinkStation HG *250 Uboot - Foonas-EM - Freelink
Kuro HG *750 Uboot - Foonas-EM - Debian Squeeze
Kuro HD *60 Uboot - Foonas-EM - Debian Squeeze (For Sale)
KuroPro *2TB Debian Lenny Armel- Kernel 2.6.26
KuroPro *1TB Debian Lenny Armel- Kernel 2.6.25.6

Well, the cover's back on and the tools are put away. But I looked through the images I took before, and cropped one that showed the RAM chip's numbers a little bit more clearly. Hope that helps.

cool. any chance to take some better pics of the board and all parts? maybe you can lend a camera for this purpose from your neighbour for example? i really would appreciate this and i promise to get you on the news on the mainpage of the buffalo wiki if you do this

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LS1 (2.6 kernel, foonas svn1062, 750 GB, UBoot 1.2) & LS Pro (FreeLink/jtymod/GenLink, changes all the time)
Thx to all donators!

I've ordered a new camera (supposedly waterproof this time ), but it will be a week or two until I receive it. If nobody else has posted good pictures by then I'll do another disassembly. Thanks for offering to host the results!

Here are some slightly better pictures. I've also added them to the first post.

Back



Front




Front detail

After removing top cover all you need is to gentle pull these side rails.

I will add some HQ pictures of the process and the board soon.

Couple more photos:

I've not been able to open my mini as described. I can pry out the tab on the rear far enough to disengage the 2 latches, but the top won't lift up except at the very back edge. It feels like there are additional latches of some sort along each edge about in line with the rear feet.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

See here:
http://buffalo.nas-central.org/wiki/Dis ... he_LS_MINI

I accidentally plugged a 12 volt power supply into a linkstation mini (which runs from 5 volts), the linkstation mini is now dead. Does anyone know if it's repairable?

I've successfully disassembled the case and, to answer someone else's question, there are 8 clips on the lid altogether, 2 at the back, 2 on top, 2 on the bottom, and 2 at the front.

Don't think so

I did that too (a couple seconds). The mainboard survived but I had to replace the hard disks. Everything still working fine 24x7 more than a year later.

I wanted to replace hard disks in my LS Mini LS-WSX1.0TL/R1E for 2x 1TB
How badly I was suprised when I found that the manufacturer of the NAS server doesn't describe this operation.
On the internet I found only very complicated instructions involving Linux, other PC to connect additional hard disk/disks etc.
As I have only my laptop and no other external hard drive, interface, etc. and I don't use any other system than WinXP/Win7 so those recipes weren't for me.
So what I did:
I created a RAID 1, then I switch off NAS, I replaced one of the hard disks for a new bigger one. I switched on the NAS back.
Of course he was complaining about some error with one of the drives (obviously the new one).
I removed and once again create RAID 1 (having now one 0,5TB and other 1TB hard disk)(but in RAID 1 obviously there was only 0,5TB)
And again shut off the NAS, replace the second 0,5TB by 1TB.
Switch on, again error, so again removed and create RAID 1.
En Voila, I have 1TB RAID 1.
Using the occasion I made pics of the mainboard, if admins are interested with, please provide some email address so I can send them.