Last year Nick bought a 3TB disk to install in a Buffalo Linkstation LS210D0301-EU to replace a failed drive.

Nick could not install the firmware onto it, despite following the
instructions from Buffalo. So I tried - also failed. I suspect the
installer wants at least 2TB available space (there are 2TB, 3TB, and
4TB variants of the NAS) and aborts with less.

The new disk is supposed to be 3TB but actually shows as 746GB when
plugged into a Windows PC. Nick can't remember ever making a note of
the available capacity when he tried to set it up (he would probably
have tried to format it at some point).

I tried deleting the partition and the available space continues to be
shown as 746 GB - so I wonder whether the device is mis-labelled.

From the label:

Toshiba DT01ACA300 Jan-2014
rev: AAA AA00 / BB0
Serial number 14BNOV2GS TZ6
LBA: 5,860,533,168 sectors CHS: 16383/16/63

Assuming 512 bytes/sector that suggests about 2.930 TB actual capacity.

I don't know where Nick bought it from, but the manufacture date looks
like January 2014 - so it is very old stock.

I note that 746 * 4 = 2984 so my suspicion is that the device has 4
heads, not 16 ...

Any ideas?



--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Fri, 8/30/2024 7:14 AM, Graham J wrote:

Last year Nick bought a 3TB disk to install in a Buffalo Linkstation LS210D0301-EU to replace a failed drive.

Nick could not install the firmware onto it, despite following the instructions from Buffalo.  So I tried - also failed.  I suspect the installer wants at least 2TB available space (there are 2TB, 3TB, and 4TB variants of the NAS) and aborts with

less.

The new disk is supposed to be 3TB but actually shows as 746GB when plugged into a Windows PC.  Nick can't remember ever making a note of the available capacity when he tried to set it up (he would probably have tried to format it at some point).

I tried deleting the partition and the available space continues to be shown as 746 GB - so I wonder whether the device is mis-labelled.

From the label:

Toshiba DT01ACA300 Jan-2014
rev: AAA AA00 / BB0
Serial number 14BNOV2GS TZ6
LBA: 5,860,533,168 sectors CHS: 16383/16/63

Assuming 512 bytes/sector that suggests about 2.930 TB actual capacity.

I don't know where Nick bought it from, but the manufacture date looks like January 2014 - so it is very old stock.

I note that 746 * 4 = 2984 so my suspicion is that the device has 4 heads, not 16 ...

Any ideas?

The CHS system is not capable of handling disks that
large, with any style. That's why fake values are used.
(There are disks with 16 heads, but a track likely has
thousands of sectors, not 64 of them.)

https://c1.neweggimages.com/ProductImageCompressAll1280/22-149-408-02.jpg

( https://www.newegg.ca/toshiba-dt01aca300-3tb/p/N82E16822149408 )

It depends on the OS, how a >2.2TB drive will be displayed.
3TB minus 2.2TB is about 800GB or so.

My example isn't very good here, because it's displaying the wrong value :-)

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/bY3JdvVV/uninitialized-disk-3-TB.gif

Notice I haven't put an MBR on mine yet. It's uninitialized.

I don't know what is on your disk, or whether the formatting
is important or not, but something like this puts the disk
into uninitialized state.

(Administrator window)

diskpart

list disk
select disk 1 # Assumes this is the 3TB drive and not your OS disk drive
clean # A quick cleaning, removing MBR and GPT partition tables
exit

Then go back to Disk Management and have a look.
If it is Win10, you can click to ignore the attempt to initialize it
now, and just enjoy the 3000 shown in the display.

Doing a "clean" by accident, is recoverable, but it requires
TestDisk and intimate knowledge of what the correct partitioning
looks like. TestDisk is slow at scanning, and that's a disincentive
to be doing a recovery.

Doing a "clean all" on a disk, is total destruction, and
no amount of scanning will bring anything back. Don't do that.
It could take several hours to execute a "clean all" on a 3TB drive.
If you wanted to clean it right off down to the bolts, that's
how you could do it. Any operation that visits every sector,
no matter what the command syntax, takes hours of your time.

Whereas the "clean" is not a forensic cleaning, it just removes
partition tables so you can't tell what was previously on the disk.
It helps disks pass various "sniff tests" -- determined forensic
work can bring it all back (assuming enough time is available for it).

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Fri, 8/30/2024 9:48 AM, Paul wrote:

On Fri, 8/30/2024 7:14 AM, Graham J wrote:

Last year Nick bought a 3TB disk to install in a Buffalo Linkstation LS210D0301-EU to replace a failed drive.

Nick could not install the firmware onto it, despite following the instructions from Buffalo.  So I tried - also failed.  I suspect the installer wants at least 2TB available space (there are 2TB, 3TB, and 4TB variants of the NAS) and aborts with

less.

The new disk is supposed to be 3TB but actually shows as 746GB when plugged into a Windows PC.  Nick can't remember ever making a note of the available capacity when he tried to set it up (he would probably have tried to format it at some point).

I tried deleting the partition and the available space continues to be shown as 746 GB - so I wonder whether the device is mis-labelled.

From the label:

Toshiba DT01ACA300 Jan-2014
rev: AAA AA00 / BB0
Serial number 14BNOV2GS TZ6
LBA: 5,860,533,168 sectors CHS: 16383/16/63

Assuming 512 bytes/sector that suggests about 2.930 TB actual capacity.

I don't know where Nick bought it from, but the manufacture date looks like January 2014 - so it is very old stock.

I note that 746 * 4 = 2984 so my suspicion is that the device has 4 heads, not 16 ...

Any ideas?

The CHS system is not capable of handling disks that
large, with any style. That's why fake values are used.
(There are disks with 16 heads, but a track likely has
thousands of sectors, not 64 of them.)

https://c1.neweggimages.com/ProductImageCompressAll1280/22-149-408-02.jpg

( https://www.newegg.ca/toshiba-dt01aca300-3tb/p/N82E16822149408 )

It depends on the OS, how a >2.2TB drive will be displayed.
3TB minus 2.2TB is about 800GB or so.

My example isn't very good here, because it's displaying the wrong value :-)

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/bY3JdvVV/uninitialized-disk-3-TB.gif

Notice I haven't put an MBR on mine yet. It's uninitialized.

I don't know what is on your disk, or whether the formatting
is important or not, but something like this puts the disk
into uninitialized state.

(Administrator window)

diskpart

list disk
select disk 1 # Assumes this is the 3TB drive and not your OS disk drive
clean # A quick cleaning, removing MBR and GPT partition tables
exit

Then go back to Disk Management and have a look.
If it is Win10, you can click to ignore the attempt to initialize it
now, and just enjoy the 3000 shown in the display.

Doing a "clean" by accident, is recoverable, but it requires
TestDisk and intimate knowledge of what the correct partitioning
looks like. TestDisk is slow at scanning, and that's a disincentive
to be doing a recovery.

Doing a "clean all" on a disk, is total destruction, and
no amount of scanning will bring anything back. Don't do that.
It could take several hours to execute a "clean all" on a 3TB drive.
If you wanted to clean it right off down to the bolts, that's
how you could do it. Any operation that visits every sector,
no matter what the command syntax, takes hours of your time.

Whereas the "clean" is not a forensic cleaning, it just removes
partition tables so you can't tell what was previously on the disk.
It helps disks pass various "sniff tests" -- determined forensic
work can bring it all back (assuming enough time is available for it).

I dug up a 3TB drive. I wanted to do a better job of making a picture,
and WinXP here, is only available in a VM.

3,000,592,982,016 2,861,588.46 * 1048576

factor 3000592982016
3000592982016: 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 7 1938007

.\vboxmanage createmedium disk --filename "D:\threetosh.vdi" --sizebyte 3000592982016 --format VDI --variant Standard

Now I get the 746GB you see, which is what WinXP sees. 3TB minus 2.2TB (legacy limit).

[Picture] WinXP-views-a-3TB-drive.gif

https://i.postimg.cc/sXCpnD5R/Win-XP-views-a-3-TB-drive.gif

And that gives 746GB like yours.

While it may seem a random number, the 3000592982016 is divisible by 63
and meets the criterion of being "slightly bigger than 3TB" for lawsuit purposes,
and that size should be seen on at least several of the remaining disk drive brands.

The platters could have more space than that, but they "don't give it to you". The most gross example, is I bought a disk one day, and half the space
on the platters was wasted, and this was a "short stroked" drive. A bit of a collectors item. There is nothing about the serial numbers on the identical drives, hinting at construction, but of three drives, one was short stroked, and that means the disk speed has less variation from one end of the disk
to the other. It does not have the 2:1 max:min ratio of normal full-stroke drives.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Paul wrote:

[snip]

It depends on the OS, how a >2.2TB drive will be displayed.
3TB minus 2.2TB is about 800GB or so.

So do you know whether Windows 8 has the 2.2TB limitation?

Thanks.

--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sat, 8/31/2024 2:58 AM, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:

[snip]

It depends on the OS, how a >2.2TB drive will be displayed.
3TB minus 2.2TB is about 800GB or so.

So do you know whether Windows 8 has the 2.2TB limitation?

Thanks.

I was thinking about this just now.

The reason WinXP does that (displays 746GB for a 3TB drive),
is because WinXP does not support GPT (which accepts extremely
large drives). WinXP only supports up to 2.2TB (32-bit fields
in the MBR, times 512 byte sectors).

Without speculating on any special cases in Windows XP, you
could likely take "capacity modulo 2.2TB" as a means of guessing
what WinXP would show in Disk Management. If you had an 18TB drive,
then WinXP would keep subtracting 2.2 from that, until the remaining
number was less than 2.2TB .

Vista thru Windows 11, should all be safe bets for displaying
closer to 3TB. And then accepting GPT as one of two partition table methods. GPT was the thing missing on WinXP, and there were a couple of
hacks (like Acronis Capacity Manager and some Seagate thing) which
made better usage of large drives on WinXP.

Now, before doing anything to the disk,

Like accepting the request to initialize the disk

you have to consider whether or what initial conditions the NAS
accepts for its disks.

My thinking, the reason for offering you a "clean" recipe, was
that the NAS is best able to handle disks the way it wants to
handle them. I don't know if the average NAS has any idea what
GPT is. Certainly older NAS devices (ones with stated low limits
in any case), were likely manufactured before GPT was a known quantity.

If the NAS instructions were to say "do this and this to the disk,
on a Windows computer", then we would know if there were pre-conditions
or not. Otherwise I'd give it a cleaned-off disk drive (do not initialize
in Disk Management).

It's possible some NAS boxes would freak out when presented with a 3TB drive. If the device previously successfully handled 3TB drives, then there is no excuse for it to reject the drive.

*******

An unrelated thing, is working with disk drives used in RAID. There
can be metadata at the end of the disk, stating what slice of the
RAID that the disk represents.

If the disk size is "slightly too small"
(less than 3,000,592,982,016 with your Tosh drive example), it could be that RAID methods are being used, and the SATA controller in that case,
is preventing access to overwrite the RAID metadata section. Placing
the drive on your Win PC and doing a "clean all" with diskpart there,
can remove the RAID metadata. Any time you take a disk out of a RAID
array and shove it into a PC, it needs a "proper cleaning" to prevent
future surprises. I've learned this the hard way, over the years,
setting up RAID, and then months later something weird happens,
and it was my failure to clean the disk properly coming out
of the RAID box, which was the root cause.

There is a lot of "junk" near the end of the disk. Veritas Dynamic Disk metadata. RAID metadata. GPT secondary table. You can sometimes use a hex editor, open the whole disk, and scroll near the end, to spot such content.
In the RAID case, the disk needs to be on your non-RAID controller
so you can see everything up that end.

It's also possible for RAID metadata to be at the beginning of a disk
drive. I had a Promise port on a machine, where the first partition would disappear, and the partition would reappear on a non-Promise port.
And that is a different behavior than most RAID situations would generate.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sat, 8/31/2024 2:58 AM, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:

[snip]

It depends on the OS, how a >2.2TB drive will be displayed.
3TB minus 2.2TB is about 800GB or so.

So do you know whether Windows 8 has the 2.2TB limitation?

Thanks.

This is unfortunately, Win8.0, but it illustrates full capability.

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/y6cGwbJy/win80-uninitialized-3-TB-disk.gif

The VMs are ones offered by Microsoft, but they have the odd preparation
issue that sometimes isn't forward compatible.

To answer your question, I don't expect any issue there. If yours
does not match, then it might have some sort of info on it, which
my sample disk lacks.

If the picture is not available, the size listed is "2794.52 GB".

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Paul wrote:

On Sat, 8/31/2024 2:58 AM, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:

[snip]

It depends on the OS, how a >2.2TB drive will be displayed.
3TB minus 2.2TB is about 800GB or so.

So do you know whether Windows 8 has the 2.2TB limitation?

Thanks.

This is unfortunately, Win8.0, but it illustrates full capability.

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/y6cGwbJy/win80-uninitialized-3-TB-disk.gif

[snip]

Thanks. The Win 8 machine I have is used for plugging in unknown disks
and testing. The disk in question initially had a 10GB partition, the remainder being unallocated space. When I deleted the 10GB partition I
then saw 746 GB unallocated space.

I tried HDDScan, and invoked its "Erase" utility; this simply logged bad
blocks continuously. I can imagine this might be evidence of a 2.2TB limit.

Tomorrow I will try diskpart clean, then see how much unallocated space
is reported.

The buffalo NAS instructions for restoring firmware says "For best
results start with completely blank drives". Quite what this means I
don't understand: normally I would assume it to mean "initialised", or
even "erased". I can see that the restore function might fail if it
can't see 3TB of available space.

More tomorrow evening ....


--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Graham J wrote:

[snip]

More tomorrow evening ....

I aborted HDDScan, "Erase" and shut down.

Today, booted W8.
Disk Management shows Disk 1: unknown not initialised, 746.58GB,
Unallocated.

Used Diskpart Clean as you suggest: Disk Management continues to show
the same information.

HDDScan shows the drive description, FW: MX60, LBA: 1565565872 - does
this number mean anything to you?

---

Plugged drive into NAS housing, collected initrd.buffalo and
uImage.buffalo from TFTP server.
Connected to my LAN, run LSupdater which finds the device, tell it
"update". same error message as before:
"Partition not found. Aborting firmware update"

Will try Diskpart Clean All and report back tomorrow.


--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Graham J wrote:

Graham J wrote:

[snip]

More tomorrow evening ....

I aborted HDDScan, "Erase" and shut down.

Today, booted W8.
Disk Management shows Disk 1: unknown not initialised, 746.58GB,
Unallocated.

Used Diskpart Clean as you suggest: Disk Management continues to show
the same information.

HDDScan shows the drive description, FW: MX60, LBA: 1565565872 - does
this number mean anything to you?

---

Plugged drive into NAS housing, collected initrd.buffalo and
uImage.buffalo from TFTP server.
Connected to my LAN, run LSupdater which finds the device, tell it
"update". same error message as before:
"Partition not found. Aborting firmware update"

Will try Diskpart Clean All and report back tomorrow.

I was wrong about the version of Windows on my test machine; it's
actually Vista Home Premium - sorry!

Do you think the 2.2TB limit still applies?

Diskpart Clean All appears to be running.


--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sun, 9/1/2024 2:37 PM, Graham J wrote:

Graham J wrote:

Graham J wrote:

[snip]

More tomorrow evening ....

I aborted HDDScan, "Erase" and shut down.

Today, booted W8.
Disk Management shows Disk 1: unknown not initialised, 746.58GB, Unallocated.

Used Diskpart Clean as you suggest: Disk Management continues to show the same information.

HDDScan shows the drive description, FW: MX60, LBA: 1565565872 - does this number mean anything to you?

---

Plugged drive into NAS housing, collected initrd.buffalo and uImage.buffalo from TFTP server.
Connected to my LAN, run LSupdater which finds the device, tell it "update". same error message as before:
"Partition not found. Aborting firmware update"

Will try Diskpart Clean All and report back tomorrow.

I was wrong about the version of Windows on my test machine; it's actually Vista Home Premium - sorry!

Do you think the 2.2TB limit still applies?

Diskpart Clean All appears to be running.

We know WinXP says "746GB".
We know Win7 says "the correct amount for a large large disk"

What we don't know, is the history during Vista.
Vista SP2 is "close to being Win7" in terms of design completeness.
You should have patched up to Vista Sp2 as soon as humanly possible,
back in the day. Vista was rushed out the door, before testing
was complete, and while mostly syrupy goodness, it had a few
rough edges.

Maintaining Vista now, is well nigh impossible. The SHA2 signing
change in Windows Update, might have something to do with it.

The method I would normally use for patching Vista, no longer works.

That's why I have a pessimistic attitude towards Vista patching now.
The signs the last time I looked... were not good. I would not
recommend wasting time on that any more. If I thought it was
humanly possible, I'd be telling you to "go for it...".

*******

In any case, let's concentrate on the problem. You have a complaint
from your NAS software, of a "missing partition"

This suggests there are two steps. Maybe the NAS software has
a "formatter" step first ? It takes the disk, puts two partitions
on it, maybe a small one for firmware, a large one for user data.

Next, the user uses the firmware installer, to populate the
small partition with the NAS operating system.

This is just a guess on my part.

But since it is complaining about a "missing partition", after
being given a "clean" disk, there has to be a step missing :-)

Your "clean all" is likely complete by now, so you will soon
have another chance for a kick at the can. A Toshiba can.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Paul wrote:

On Sun, 9/1/2024 2:37 PM, Graham J wrote:

Graham J wrote:

Graham J wrote:

[snip]

More tomorrow evening ....

I aborted HDDScan, "Erase" and shut down.

Today, booted W8.
Disk Management shows Disk 1: unknown not initialised, 746.58GB, Unallocated.

Used Diskpart Clean as you suggest: Disk Management continues to show the same information.

HDDScan shows the drive description, FW: MX60, LBA: 1565565872 - does this number mean anything to you?

---

Plugged drive into NAS housing, collected initrd.buffalo and uImage.buffalo from TFTP server.
Connected to my LAN, run LSupdater which finds the device, tell it "update". same error message as before:
"Partition not found. Aborting firmware update"

Will try Diskpart Clean All and report back tomorrow.

I was wrong about the version of Windows on my test machine; it's actually Vista Home Premium - sorry!

Do you think the 2.2TB limit still applies?

Diskpart Clean All appears to be running.

We know WinXP says "746GB".
We know Win7 says "the correct amount for a large large disk"

What we don't know, is the history during Vista.
Vista SP2 is "close to being Win7" in terms of design completeness.
You should have patched up to Vista Sp2 as soon as humanly possible,
back in the day. Vista was rushed out the door, before testing
was complete, and while mostly syrupy goodness, it had a few
rough edges.

Maintaining Vista now, is well nigh impossible. The SHA2 signing
change in Windows Update, might have something to do with it.

The method I would normally use for patching Vista, no longer works.

That's why I have a pessimistic attitude towards Vista patching now.
The signs the last time I looked... were not good. I would not
recommend wasting time on that any more. If I thought it was
humanly possible, I'd be telling you to "go for it...".

*******

In any case, let's concentrate on the problem. You have a complaint
from your NAS software, of a "missing partition"

This suggests there are two steps. Maybe the NAS software has
a "formatter" step first ? It takes the disk, puts two partitions
on it, maybe a small one for firmware, a large one for user data.

Next, the user uses the firmware installer, to populate the
small partition with the NAS operating system.

This is just a guess on my part.

But since it is complaining about a "missing partition", after
being given a "clean" disk, there has to be a step missing :-)

Your "clean all" is likely complete by now, so you will soon
have another chance for a kick at the can. A Toshiba can.

Paul

You could try legacy update:

https://legacyupdate.net/

I've only used it to update a win XP and win 2000, both running under
virtual box. It seemed to work pretty well.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Paul wrote:

[snip]

In any case, let's concentrate on the problem. You have a complaint
from your NAS software, of a "missing partition"

This suggests there are two steps. Maybe the NAS software has
a "formatter" step first ? It takes the disk, puts two partitions
on it, maybe a small one for firmware, a large one for user data.

Next, the user uses the firmware installer, to populate the
small partition with the NAS operating system.

This is contradicted by the Buffalo instructions at: <https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Restoring_Stock_Firmware_via_TFTP>

The first step is to transfer 2 files from the TFTP server; then connect
the NAS to a LAN where it picks up an IP address by DHCP.

The second step is to run the LSUpdater in debug mode from a PC on the
LAN. What this does is anybody's guess, but my expectation is that it
formats the empty disk (perhaps as you describe) and installs the OS on
it. It takes several seconds before the error appears, so my suspicion
is that it tries to format, and fails; but rather than report "format
failed" it simply says there is no partition.

I've used a similar technique on a different model of Buffalo NAS (the LS-X1.0TL-EU), and the process behaved as expected.


--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sun, 9/1/2024 4:42 PM, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:

[snip]

In any case, let's concentrate on the problem. You have a complaint
from your NAS software, of a "missing partition"

This suggests there are two steps. Maybe the NAS software has
a "formatter" step first ? It takes the disk, puts two partitions
on it, maybe a small one for firmware, a large one for user data.

Next, the user uses the firmware installer, to populate the
small partition with the NAS operating system.

This is contradicted by the Buffalo instructions at: <https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Restoring_Stock_Firmware_via_TFTP>

The first step is to transfer 2 files from the TFTP server; then connect the NAS to a LAN where it picks up an IP address by DHCP.

The second step is to run the LSUpdater in debug mode from a PC on the LAN.  What this does is anybody's guess, but my expectation is that it formats the empty disk (perhaps as you describe) and installs the OS on it.  It takes several seconds before

the error appears, so my suspicion is that it tries to format, and fails; but rather than report "format failed" it simply says there is no partition.

I've used a similar technique on a different model of Buffalo NAS (the LS-X1.0TL-EU), and the process behaved as expected.

I got lucky. The Buffalo forums mostly had questions and no response.
But one of them, posted no text, just this link.

http://www.herzig-net.de/prog/?page=unbrick_ls-wxl

Running the LSUpdater, starts with fiddling some INI file.

Edit LSUpdater.ini

[Flags]
VersionCheck = 0
NoFormatting = 1

[SpecialFlags]
Debug=1

Start LS-Updater, it should find the device in EM-Mode. Open System Menu and go to Debug-Options.

(I think you've done this part already.)

Then, the Debug mode exposes tick boxes for the run.

Notice the individual does two runs. The first run is
a partitioner. The second run may be installing a Linux (/boot).

The problem then, is that LSUpdater is not a "logical" flow. It is
a debugger in this case, running *only* the specified commands and
doing them in *no particular sequence*. It is up to the operator
to realize that a blank disk drive, needs some touch-up with the
controls on the right hand side, first (in the first run). Then,
the second run, turns off the active right hand side controls,
and the left hand side does the update.

The interface is arranged this way, to avoid a lot of if-then-else.
A concept of computer science, is at some point, we are better
off offering "primitives" and not "recipes". Especially when data loss
is potentially involved, and a lawsuit could be on the horizon.

I think the idea is good. It strikes the right balance. If it was
too automated, it might delete user data.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Paul wrote:

[snip]

Start LS-Updater, it should find the device in EM-Mode. Open System Menu and go to Debug-Options.

(I think you've done this part already.)

Then, the Debug mode exposes tick boxes for the run.

My version of LSUpdater has no option to enter Debug Mode, so I don't
see the menu described in your link:

<http://www.herzig-net.de/prog/?page=unbrick_ls-wxl>

However, right-click on the title bar brings up an option to select the
Debug Mode. So I will try that later this morning.

Thanks.


--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Graham J wrote:
[snip]

<http://www.herzig-net.de/prog/?page=unbrick_ls-wxl>

However, right-click on the title bar brings up an option to select the
Debug Mode.  So I will try that later this morning.

I have "BUFFALO LinkStation 200 Series Updater Version 1.84"

<https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Restoring_Stock_Firmware_via_TFTP>
shows the edit:

[Flags]
VersionCheck = 0
NoFormatting = 0

[SpecialFlags]
Debug=1

Your link differs in one line:
NoFormatting = 1

I have tried both, to no effect.

My debug menu differs, it looks like:

Update BOOT Do not check version
Update KERNEL Run complete format (greyed out)
Update initrd Delete user partition
Update rootfs Force update

I can't find a setting to enable "Run complete format"; whatever do, it remains greyed out. Whatever settings I try I continue to see the "No partition found" error.

Any ideas?

I think there is an older version of the firmware including the updater
- I might try that later.


--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Paul wrote:
[snip]

https://i.postimg.cc/y6cGwbJy/win80-uninitialized-3-TB-disk.gif

The VMs are ones offered by Microsoft, but they have the odd preparation issue that sometimes isn't forward compatible.

To answer your question, I don't expect any issue there. If yours
does not match, then it might have some sort of info on it, which
my sample disk lacks.

If the picture is not available, the size listed is "2794.52 GB".

I tried the known bad Toshiba disk in the Vista PC.

It shows 4 volumes:

E: 977 MB
F: 4.77 GB
L: 977 MB
M: 2779.84 GB

So this one really is nominally 3 TB. We know it is bad: it doesn't
boot, and the error light indicates bad sectors.

HDDScan on the Vista PC also shows bad sectors for a sequential read
test - I only let it run for a minute or so.

So Vista does show the correct size.

I suspect that a blank disk has to be correctly formatted to achieve
3TB, but in Vista when I've tried that it shows 746 GB. So it's still
possible that the new disk is in fact mislabelled or faulty, or cannot
be formatted properly because of the 2.2 TB limit.

Is there a format tool that will run under Vista and avoid the 2.2 TB limit?


--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, 9/2/2024 5:46 AM, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:
[snip]

     https://i.postimg.cc/y6cGwbJy/win80-uninitialized-3-TB-disk.gif

The VMs are ones offered by Microsoft, but they have the odd preparation
issue that sometimes isn't forward compatible.

To answer your question, I don't expect any issue there. If yours
does not match, then it might have some sort of info on it, which
my sample disk lacks.

If the picture is not available, the size listed is "2794.52 GB".

I tried the known bad Toshiba disk in the Vista PC.

It shows 4 volumes:

E: 977 MB
F: 4.77 GB
L: 977 MB
M: 2779.84 GB

So this one really is nominally 3 TB.  We know it is bad: it doesn't boot, and the error light indicates bad sectors.

HDDScan on the Vista PC also shows bad sectors for a sequential read test - I only let it run for a minute or so.

So Vista does show the correct size.

I suspect that a blank disk has to be correctly formatted to achieve 3TB, but in Vista when I've tried that it shows 746 GB.  So it's still possible that the new disk is in fact mislabelled or faulty, or cannot be formatted properly because of the 2.2

TB limit.

Is there a format tool that will run under Vista and avoid the 2.2 TB limit?

Vista supports winver.exe . You can run it and check the build info and see if SP2 is installed.
If you are already at SP2, then we would know there was no relief via updates/upgrades.

https://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/windowsvistasp28.png

The problem *could* be caused by hardware. If the disk interface standard
was old enough in the machine, that could cause what we're seeing. I hope
you did not take an IDE ribbon cable port and fit an IDE to SATA adapter
to it. It would have to be an IDE interface limited to 28 bit LBA, instead
of the 48 bit LBA that native SATA would support. As far as I know, the
first SATA *native* ports were running the ATA command set which includes
48 bit LBA. And Vista is a later OS than WinXP Gold and KB303033, which was
the transition period from 28 bit LBA to 48 bit LBA.

As far as I know, native SATA has always been 48 bit LBA, because of the ATA standard used to build it. You have to work hard (adapter on wrong hardware), to defeat that.

If you had a USB to SATA housing, you could put the disk in that,
and that would provide an alternate hardware path. This is an example
of a 3.5" housing for disks, with poor ventilation. I've had at least
6TB disks off this, and probably the 18TB drive off this, and it worked
OK. The reason USB works, is USB uses SCSI CDB (control data block) for
passing addresses and that allows relatively large addresses to be used.
This could be used with USB2 or UWB3.

https://vantecusa.com/products_detail.php?p_id=29

As far as the prep for this NAS, was the preparation done on this
particular computer at some point in the past ? Perhaps it shipped
with the 3TB disk drive in it originally, already factory prepared ?

At this point, I'm just trying to jog your memory and get some
idea what assets you have to hand. For the Vantec item (which is
years old), I took the electronics board out of that, and
just lay it on the table and work with it, as the housing
would make the drive pretty warm while running (for hours on end).
And good enclosures with a fan on them, are hard to find.

I have trouble believing this Vista era computer is totally
inept at big disks :-) There's *got* to be an explanation and
a way to get full access. Linux would be an alternative,
but that's a big ask and we're not there yet. We have to think
through, what other hardware you have at hand to defeat this dragon.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, 9/2/2024 4:35 AM, Graham J wrote:

Graham J wrote:
[snip]

<http://www.herzig-net.de/prog/?page=unbrick_ls-wxl>

However, right-click on the title bar brings up an option to select the Debug Mode.  So I will try that later this morning.

I have "BUFFALO LinkStation 200 Series Updater Version 1.84"

<https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Restoring_Stock_Firmware_via_TFTP> shows the edit:

[Flags]
VersionCheck = 0
NoFormatting = 0

[SpecialFlags]
Debug=1

Your link differs in one line:
NoFormatting = 1

I have tried both, to no effect.

My debug menu differs, it looks like:

Update BOOT    Do not check version
Update KERNEL    Run complete format (greyed out)
Update initrd    Delete user partition
Update rootfs    Force update

I can't find a setting to enable "Run complete format"; whatever  do, it remains greyed out.  Whatever settings I try I continue to see the "No partition found" error.

Any ideas?

I think there is an older version of the firmware including the updater - I might try that later.

The hardware doesn't look that old. Maybe 2016 for the NAS ?

https://www.buffalotech.com/support/downloads/linkstation-200-series

It could be, that the Buffalo software compared the claimed
size of the disk, to the range it is able to format, and
"sees your 746GB problem" and that is what prevents the
complete format from showing up.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Paul wrote:
[snip]

Is there a format tool that will run under Vista and avoid the 2.2 TB limit?

Vista supports winver.exe . You can run it and check the build info and see if SP2 is installed.
If you are already at SP2, then we would know there was no relief via updates/upgrades.

Will check the version ...

https://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/windowsvistasp28.png

The problem *could* be caused by hardware.

The motherboard has 2 SATA ports. I disconnected the CD ROM and am
using that port for the test disk.

As far as the prep for this NAS, was the preparation done on this
particular computer at some point in the past ?

Nick prepared this disk on his W7 PC. Says he used IM-Magic Partition
Resizer Free. Because he could not get TFTP to work he tried formatting
as EXT3 and copying the Buffalo initrd.buffalo and uImage.buffalo to it, following some instructions he found on the Buffalo site - don't know how.

I've tried SeagateDiscWizard (seems to need paid-for version to allow
partition size to be increased), also PAssist_Std (same limitation).

Tried IM-Magic Partition Resizer Free - no option to increase partition
size.

All 3 shows the unallocated disk to be 746.52 GB with:
Sectors: 1565565872
Sectors/track: 63
Cylinders: 103542
Heads: 240

So I'm beginning to believe that the disk is mis-labelled. And that if
the disk isn't big enough the Buffalo LSUpdater knows it cannot format it.


--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 2024-09-02 11:46, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:
[snip]

     https://i.postimg.cc/y6cGwbJy/win80-uninitialized-3-TB-disk.gif

The VMs are ones offered by Microsoft, but they have the odd preparation
issue that sometimes isn't forward compatible.

To answer your question, I don't expect any issue there. If yours
does not match, then it might have some sort of info on it, which
my sample disk lacks.

If the picture is not available, the size listed is "2794.52 GB".

I tried the known bad Toshiba disk in the Vista PC.

It shows 4 volumes:

E: 977 MB
F: 4.77 GB
L: 977 MB
M: 2779.84 GB

So this one really is nominally 3 TB.  We know it is bad: it doesn't
boot, and the error light indicates bad sectors.

HDDScan on the Vista PC also shows bad sectors for a sequential read
test - I only let it run for a minute or so.

So Vista does show the correct size.

I suspect that a blank disk has to be correctly formatted to achieve
3TB, but in Vista when I've tried that it shows 746 GB.  So it's still possible that the new disk is in fact mislabelled or faulty, or cannot
be formatted properly because of the 2.2 TB limit.

Some disks had a jumper that would limit the disk size for compatibility
with some systems.

Is there a format tool that will run under Vista and avoid the 2.2 TB
limit?

Sorry, I'm more familiar with Linux tools.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, 9/2/2024 3:34 PM, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:
[snip]

Is there a format tool that will run under Vista and avoid the 2.2 TB limit?

Vista supports winver.exe . You can run it and check the build info and see if SP2 is installed.
If you are already at SP2, then we would know there was no relief via updates/upgrades.

Will check the version ...

     https://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/windowsvistasp28.png

The problem *could* be caused by hardware.

The motherboard has 2 SATA ports.  I disconnected the CD ROM and am using that port for the test disk.

As far as the prep for this NAS, was the preparation done on this
particular computer at some point in the past ?

Nick prepared this disk on his W7 PC.  Says he used IM-Magic Partition Resizer Free.  Because he could not get TFTP to work he tried formatting as EXT3 and copying the Buffalo initrd.buffalo and uImage.buffalo to it, following some instructions he

found on the Buffalo site - don't know how.

I've tried SeagateDiscWizard (seems to need paid-for version to allow partition size to be increased), also PAssist_Std (same limitation).

Tried IM-Magic Partition Resizer Free - no option to increase partition size.

All 3 shows the unallocated disk to be 746.52 GB with:
Sectors: 1565565872
Sectors/track: 63
Cylinders: 103542
Heads: 240

So I'm beginning to believe that the disk is mis-labelled.  And that if the disk isn't big enough the Buffalo LSUpdater knows it cannot format it.

That 746 value is rather magical. I've seen this before. Many
times in fact.

This is NOT the fault of the drive. It's the other end of the
cable that needs a talking to :-)

At one time, we used to descend into MSDOS utilities, to talk to
hard drives. This one is like that, except that it accepts
running from a Administrator Command Prompt window (at a guess).
As long as it "talks ATA directly to a drive", it should
avoid the 746 behavior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATATool

For me, it would be simpler to boot a Linux Live media and
work on the disk there. Linux can give the size of the drive in bytes.

sudo fdisk /dev/sda SATA Disk 0 FDISK is for legacy MSDOS partitioned disks.
sudo fdisk /dev/sdb SATA Disk 1

sudo gdisk /dev/sda Same as FDISK, only for GPT partitioned disks.

When you don't know what a disk is, you use gdisk first, and
read the declaration at the top. Q usually stands for Quit.
Just the first part of what gdisk burps up when you start it,
is enough to identify the drive situation.

If the drive declaration as seen in gdisk resembles a legacy disk,
you switch over to fdisk, and do whatever needs doing. The size
both see, should be the 3TB number. But obviously, when you create
partitions with fdisk, the result can't be more than 2.2TB because
of the 32 bit MBR fields. But at least it does not pull the boner
that WinXP does, by prematurely masking the number instead of showing
the correct size.

*******

In Disk Management, there is an Expand/Shrink option when you
work on a partition. That's unlike WinXP, which does not have
that function. What is missing from Windows, is the "Move/Resize"
that commercial tools have. Windows offers "Resize" only. Whereas
users really want "Move/Resize" as it is the most useful set of
features. Linux has Move/Resize in gparted. And gparted handles
a lot of different partition types. Windows, for example, does not
know what EXT is. Whereas Linux knows both EXT and NTFS, FAT32, and so on.

sudo gparted /dev/sda

But I only want to concentrate on things you want to do,
rather than just offer some random method. For example,
if you don't like Linux, or you don't like working
with the MSDOS-era tools (gag!), then there's no sense
dwelling on them.

Basically, anything that does not display 746 is a candidate :-)

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, 9/2/2024 5:16 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2024-09-02 11:46, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:
[snip]

     https://i.postimg.cc/y6cGwbJy/win80-uninitialized-3-TB-disk.gif >>>
The VMs are ones offered by Microsoft, but they have the odd preparation >>> issue that sometimes isn't forward compatible.

To answer your question, I don't expect any issue there. If yours
does not match, then it might have some sort of info on it, which
my sample disk lacks.

If the picture is not available, the size listed is "2794.52 GB".

I tried the known bad Toshiba disk in the Vista PC.

It shows 4 volumes:

E: 977 MB
F: 4.77 GB
L: 977 MB
M: 2779.84 GB

So this one really is nominally 3 TB.  We know it is bad: it doesn't boot, and the error light indicates bad sectors.

HDDScan on the Vista PC also shows bad sectors for a sequential read test - I only let it run for a minute or so.

So Vista does show the correct size.

I suspect that a blank disk has to be correctly formatted to achieve 3TB, but in Vista when I've tried that it shows 746 GB.  So it's still possible that the new disk is in fact mislabelled or faulty, or cannot be formatted properly because of the 2.

2 TB limit.

Some disks had a jumper that would limit the disk size for compatibility with some systems.

Is there a format tool that will run under Vista and avoid the 2.2 TB limit?

Sorry, I'm more familiar with Linux tools.

That's a CHS ("clip") jumper, and two different OSes interpret
the disk size as 2GB or 33GB. The same CHS pattern used in both
cases, but the (ancient) OSes interpret the value differently.

The 746GB and ~3000GB values are much larger than any clip jumper effect.

The 746GB on WinXP is "modulo 2.2TB arithmetic". Take the
disk size, keep subtracting the 2.2TB number, until the remainder
is less than 2.2TB.

WinXP displaying the size of a 3TB and a 5TB hard drive...

3TB - 2.2TB = ~800GB displayed (746GB exact value)

5TB - 2.2TB - 2.2TB = ~600GB displayed

The MBR only has room for 32 bit fields, and 32 bits worth of sectors
is 2.2TB . Bits above the 32 bit part, are masked off.

The ZIP archive format has a similar problem - the size field can
only represent up to 4GB or something. When bigger files came along,
there was some "trick" introduced, so they could represent sizes
bigger than 4GB. If an older software was used, it "didn't know the trick"
and the size displayed was some weird number.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Paul wrote:
[snip]

That 746 value is rather magical. I've seen this before. Many
times in fact.

This is NOT the fault of the drive. It's the other end of the
cable that needs a talking to :-)

At one time, we used to descend into MSDOS utilities, to talk to
hard drives. This one is like that, except that it accepts
running from a Administrator Command Prompt window (at a guess).
As long as it "talks ATA directly to a drive", it should
avoid the 746 behavior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATATool

For me, it would be simpler to boot a Linux Live media and
work on the disk there.

Thanks. I will try ATATool next.

My difficulty with Linux is lack of any relevant experience, plus the
fact that my test hardware is an old small-format Vista PC whre I
disconnect the CD player to free up a SATA port so as to connect the new
3TB drive.

More later ...

--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Graham J wrote:
[snip]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATATool

For me, it would be simpler to boot a Linux Live media and
work on the disk there.

Thanks.  I will try ATATool next.

Their website says:

"ATATool is only available to professional users such digital forensic practitioners, law enforcement, security researchers and similar. It is
no longer available for personal download. If you would like to use
ATATool please Contact Us to request access."

I've contacted them but don't expect a successful outcome. Do you have
a copy you could send me?

Or suggest an alternative download site?


--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Tue, 9/3/2024 4:19 AM, Graham J wrote:

Graham J wrote:
[snip]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATATool

For me, it would be simpler to boot a Linux Live media and
work on the disk there.

Thanks.  I will try ATATool next.

Their website says:

"ATATool is only available to professional users such digital forensic practitioners, law enforcement, security researchers and similar. It is no longer available for personal download. If you would like to use ATATool please Contact Us to request

access."

I've contacted them but don't expect a successful outcome.  Do you have a copy you could send me?

Or suggest an alternative download site?

I didn't realize that was signup-ware. The description said "freeware".
Which it isn't, exactly.

You see, when I simulate your setup, everything looks normal.

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/Wp0v49f5/vista-sp2-test-vm.gif

The hardware information, is with CPU-Z.

An older version of that, is here. If "Google Vignette" dialog
appears, use the "reload" button on your webpage - this is just
a very crude cookie setting mechanism. The CPUZ guy has to make
a few pennies off the adverts, to pay for the downloads. This is
what I used in the picture. The CPU and Mainboard squares (1 and 3)
are the ones I'm most interested in. The Mainboard may mention
the chipset, and perhaps the chipset offers a hint as to the
bad responses we are seeing. When I do a VM, it isn't an exact
emulation of anything, so it cannot be used to predict every
property. I'm just showing in my picture above, that Vista
is *capable* of doing the right thing. It's not "doomed"
like WinXP.

https://www.cpuid.com/downloads/cpu-z/cpu-z_1.78-en.zip

https://download.cpuid.com/cpu-z/cpu-z_1.78-en.zip

You can see in the third square, I am sporting ("emulated")

i440FX Northbridge, 82371SB (PIIX3) Southbridge

and the Southbridge would be the device with IDE and SATA ports.
Due to the newness of SATA in your case, you could have a SIL3112
as the "external" SATA controller. It was one way of putting
a SATA controller on motherboards, before Southbridges had SATA
ports.

You can see in my picture, I issue a command to get disk size.
But my fear is, none of these commands work "directly" with a SATA port,
and they only copy the wobbly determination the OS made. If the hardware
were to work properly, then my picture shows that Vista *can* do the
right thing.

*******

Vista, like WinXP, is kinda old, and presents a problem for some
of the tools we could be using.

This site offers a USB stick maker, and you can put Linux ISO materials
on a USB stick, as well as Windows ISO materials. It uses a Syslinux
wrapper for both cases. But support does not go back to Vista. Screwed.
Your machine is on the edge of USB boot support. It might have shown
up the same year, or a year before your machine.

https://rufus.ie

Since I know you're using your DVD port for the hard drive, I can't
very well encourage you to burn a DVD, as then we can't connect the
3TB drive. A USB disk enclosure could also be used to host a SATA
drive, but that costs money.

I use a Vantecusa NST-366S3-SV silver colored enclosure for disks,
and it plugs to either a USB2 port or a USB3 port. It has its own
12V 2A wall adapter for power. The enclosure is too tight, and has
no cooling fan. I take the electronics out of the enclosure,
and just sit the hard drive on a support while working on it.
That's an example of working with a drive, when you are short a port.

You can also get PCI Express to SATA cards, to extend the
capabilities of the machine. If the computer is old enough,
it does not have PCI Express and only has the older PCI.
There are things like the SIL3112 (likely out of production),
or maybe a Marvell chip for SATA. But after COVID, a lot of
stuff like this has gone missing.

When you have an old computer, you cannot catch a break, and you
need a well stocked junk room to do just about anything.

My newer motherboards have no PCI slots, and then I can't
use my well stocked junk room with PCI cards in it.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Paul wrote:

[snip]

I didn't realize that was signup-ware. The description said "freeware".
Which it isn't, exactly.

You see, when I simulate your setup, everything looks normal.

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/Wp0v49f5/vista-sp2-test-vm.gif

[snip]

I will investigate bootable USB support on the old Vista PC.

Please can you explain why Vista shows the correct total capacity for
the known faulty drive (4 partitions totalling about 2786 GB), but the
wrong capacity (746 GB) for the new drive (which has been partitioned
before but has had all its partitions deleted)?

--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Tue, 9/3/2024 8:20 AM, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:

[snip]

I didn't realize that was signup-ware. The description said "freeware".
Which it isn't, exactly.

You see, when I simulate your setup, everything looks normal.

    [Picture]

     https://i.postimg.cc/Wp0v49f5/vista-sp2-test-vm.gif

[snip]

I will investigate bootable USB support on the old Vista PC.

Please can you explain why Vista shows the correct total capacity for the known faulty drive (4 partitions totalling about 2786 GB), but the wrong capacity (746 GB) for the new drive (which has been partitioned before but has had all its partitions

deleted)?


Intel RST driver will apparently do that (I didn't know that).

https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmanager/3tb-drive-shows-746gb.html

That's something I cannot readily emulate. The closest I could get,
is flip the Optiplex 780 with Q45 (4-series chipset) back to RAID,
and install Vista there. I would have to do a physical install, as
RAID drivers go with very specific chipsets.

*******

Your computer smells like a Dell.

Dells shipped "RAID Ready", and that's an unnecessary
hassle for the average home user. The Dells get refurbished
and then people like me have to deal with the mess that makes :-)

Based on what I know now, this is something a user should
strive to correct, the first day they get the stupid thing.
It should not be left to pollute disk drives with RAID metadata.

I had enough trouble myself, flipping my Dell over, let
alone help someone else do it successfully. It's not hard,
but you have to figure out how to do a driver re-arming,
and I don't know off hand, the specifics for Vista. The thing
is, the Intel RST driver is a combo AHCI/RAID driver, so it
is ready to do AHCI at the drop of a hat. It's the OS that
"clings" to the driver, and has to be told to reconsider
which driver to use. If you just go into the BIOS and change
the setting, the OS BSODs with an "Inaccessible Boot Volume"
error if the OS does not use the other option. If drivers
are re-armed, then the OS can figure it out for itself.
This was not a good choice on Microsofts part, how that works.

Maybe you can start in Safe Mode (F8) and make a change to the
OS somehow that way. Some of the other methods, require Regedit.

It'll be a shame if you have a Dell :-/ I've learned a few small
lessons owning a refurb.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hank Rogers wrote:

Paul wrote:

On Tue, 9/3/2024 8:20 AM, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:

[snip]

I didn't realize that was signup-ware. The description said "freeware". >>>> Which it isn't, exactly.

You see, when I simulate your setup, everything looks normal.

    [Picture]

     https://i.postimg.cc/Wp0v49f5/vista-sp2-test-vm.gif

[snip]

I will investigate bootable USB support on the old Vista PC.

Please can you explain why Vista shows the correct total capacity for
the known faulty drive (4 partitions totalling about 2786 GB), but
the wrong capacity (746 GB) for the new drive (which has been
partitioned before but has had all its partitions deleted)?

Intel RST driver will apparently do that (I didn't know that).


https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmanager/3tb-drive-shows-746gb.html >>

That's something I cannot readily emulate. The closest I could get,
is flip the Optiplex 780 with Q45 (4-series chipset) back to RAID,
and install Vista there. I would have to do a physical install, as
RAID drivers go with very specific chipsets.

*******

Your computer smells like a Dell.

Dells shipped "RAID Ready", and that's an unnecessary
hassle for the average home user. The Dells get refurbished
and then people like me have to deal with the mess that makes :-)

Based on what I know now, this is something a user should
strive to correct, the first day they get the stupid thing.
It should not be left to pollute disk drives with RAID metadata.

I had enough trouble myself, flipping my Dell over, let
alone help someone else do it successfully. It's not hard,
but you have to figure out how to do a driver re-arming,
and I don't know off hand, the specifics for Vista. The thing
is, the Intel RST driver is a combo AHCI/RAID driver, so it
is ready to do AHCI at the drop of a hat. It's the OS that
"clings" to the driver, and has to be told to reconsider
which driver to use. If you just go into the BIOS and change
the setting, the OS BSODs with an "Inaccessible Boot Volume"
error if the OS does not use the other option. If drivers
are re-armed, then the OS can figure it out for itself.
This was not a good choice on Microsofts part, how that works.

Maybe you can start in Safe Mode (F8) and make a change to the
OS somehow that way. Some of the other methods, require Regedit.

It'll be a shame if you have a Dell :-/ I've learned a few small
lessons owning a refurb.

    Paul

Set windows to always boot into safe mode. Then switch the bios to ahci.
When you reboot (in safe mode) windows will download drivers it needs.
Now you can set windows to always boot normally.

Forgot to mention. Use msconfig to set boot to safe mode. See the
msconfig boot tab. This way, after you reboot from changing bios,
windows will still start even though you switched to ahci in bios.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Paul wrote:

On Tue, 9/3/2024 8:20 AM, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:

[snip]

I didn't realize that was signup-ware. The description said "freeware".
Which it isn't, exactly.

You see, when I simulate your setup, everything looks normal.

    [Picture]

     https://i.postimg.cc/Wp0v49f5/vista-sp2-test-vm.gif

[snip]

I will investigate bootable USB support on the old Vista PC.

Please can you explain why Vista shows the correct total capacity for the known faulty drive (4 partitions totalling about 2786 GB), but the wrong capacity (746 GB) for the new drive (which has been partitioned before but has had all its partitions

deleted)?

Intel RST driver will apparently do that (I didn't know that).

https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmanager/3tb-drive-shows-746gb.html

That's something I cannot readily emulate. The closest I could get,
is flip the Optiplex 780 with Q45 (4-series chipset) back to RAID,
and install Vista there. I would have to do a physical install, as
RAID drivers go with very specific chipsets.

*******

Your computer smells like a Dell.

Dells shipped "RAID Ready", and that's an unnecessary
hassle for the average home user. The Dells get refurbished
and then people like me have to deal with the mess that makes :-)

Based on what I know now, this is something a user should
strive to correct, the first day they get the stupid thing.
It should not be left to pollute disk drives with RAID metadata.

I had enough trouble myself, flipping my Dell over, let
alone help someone else do it successfully. It's not hard,
but you have to figure out how to do a driver re-arming,
and I don't know off hand, the specifics for Vista. The thing
is, the Intel RST driver is a combo AHCI/RAID driver, so it
is ready to do AHCI at the drop of a hat. It's the OS that
"clings" to the driver, and has to be told to reconsider
which driver to use. If you just go into the BIOS and change
the setting, the OS BSODs with an "Inaccessible Boot Volume"
error if the OS does not use the other option. If drivers
are re-armed, then the OS can figure it out for itself.
This was not a good choice on Microsofts part, how that works.

Maybe you can start in Safe Mode (F8) and make a change to the
OS somehow that way. Some of the other methods, require Regedit.

It'll be a shame if you have a Dell :-/ I've learned a few small
lessons owning a refurb.

Paul

Set windows to always boot into safe mode. Then switch the bios to ahci.
When you reboot (in safe mode) windows will download drivers it needs.
Now you can set windows to always boot normally.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Tue, 9/3/2024 3:19 PM, Hank Rogers wrote:

Hank Rogers wrote:

Paul wrote:

On Tue, 9/3/2024 8:20 AM, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:

[snip]

I didn't realize that was signup-ware. The description said "freeware". >>>>> Which it isn't, exactly.

You see, when I simulate your setup, everything looks normal.

    [Picture]

     https://i.postimg.cc/Wp0v49f5/vista-sp2-test-vm.gif

[snip]

I will investigate bootable USB support on the old Vista PC.

Please can you explain why Vista shows the correct total capacity for the known faulty drive (4 partitions totalling about 2786 GB), but the wrong capacity (746 GB) for the new drive (which has been partitioned before but has had all its partitions

deleted)?

Intel RST driver will apparently do that (I didn't know that).

    https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmanager/3tb-drive-shows-746gb.html

That's something I cannot readily emulate. The closest I could get,
is flip the Optiplex 780 with Q45 (4-series chipset) back to RAID,
and install Vista there. I would have to do a physical install, as
RAID drivers go with very specific chipsets.

*******

Your computer smells like a Dell.

Dells shipped "RAID Ready", and that's an unnecessary
hassle for the average home user. The Dells get refurbished
and then people like me have to deal with the mess that makes :-)

Based on what I know now, this is something a user should
strive to correct, the first day they get the stupid thing.
It should not be left to pollute disk drives with RAID metadata.

I had enough trouble myself, flipping my Dell over, let
alone help someone else do it successfully. It's not hard,
but you have to figure out how to do a driver re-arming,
and I don't know off hand, the specifics for Vista. The thing
is, the Intel RST driver is a combo AHCI/RAID driver, so it
is ready to do AHCI at the drop of a hat. It's the OS that
"clings" to the driver, and has to be told to reconsider
which driver to use. If you just go into the BIOS and change
the setting, the OS BSODs with an "Inaccessible Boot Volume"
error if the OS does not use the other option. If drivers
are re-armed, then the OS can figure it out for itself.
This was not a good choice on Microsofts part, how that works.

Maybe you can start in Safe Mode (F8) and make a change to the
OS somehow that way. Some of the other methods, require Regedit.

It'll be a shame if you have a Dell :-/ I've learned a few small
lessons owning a refurb.

    Paul

Set windows to always boot into safe mode. Then switch the bios to ahci. When you reboot (in safe mode) windows will download drivers it needs. Now you can set windows to always boot normally.

Forgot to mention. Use msconfig to set boot to safe mode. See the msconfig boot tab. This way, after you reboot from changing bios, windows will still start even though you switched to ahci in bios.

You can make Safe Mode (F8 key) a permanent feature of the boot management screen.

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu True

To remove:

bcdedit /deletevalue {bootmgr} displaybootmenu

*******

If you use the "bcdedit" command, it shows as:

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
...
displaybootmenu Yes

( https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/22455-enable-disable-f8-advanced-boot-options-windows-10-a.html )

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Paul wrote:

[snip all good stuff to date]

The 746GB on WinXP is "modulo 2.2TB arithmetic". Take the > disk size, keep subtracting the 2.2TB number, until the remainder> is

less than 2.2TB.
I bought an ICY BOX IB-AC705-6G External Enclosure.

It is a SATA to USB adapter with a 12v power input for the hard disk.

Connected it to my Windows 7 PC.

Disk Management shows it is nominally 3 TB, actually 2794.52 GB.

Via TFTP I can transfer initrd.buffalo and uImage.buffalo

Navigator sees it and says (correctly) it is in Emergency Mode.

LSUpdater version 1.84 sees it, but whatever options I try it says:
"Partition not found. Aborting firmware update."

This is both with the new disk un-partitioned, and with a single
partition formatted NTFS with GPT partitioning.

The format option in LSUpdater 1.84 is greyed out. All the info I can
find on the web refers to an earlier version of LSUpdater, so I will try
to find that one.

Thanks for your help.


--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Thu, 9/5/2024 5:15 PM, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:

[snip all good stuff to date]

The 746GB on WinXP is "modulo 2.2TB arithmetic". Take the > disk size, keep subtracting the 2.2TB number, until the remainder> is

less than 2.2TB.
I bought an ICY BOX IB-AC705-6G External Enclosure.

It is a SATA to USB adapter with a 12v power input for the hard disk.

Connected it to my Windows 7 PC.

Disk Management shows it is nominally 3 TB, actually 2794.52 GB.

Via TFTP I can transfer initrd.buffalo and uImage.buffalo

Navigator sees it and says (correctly) it is in Emergency Mode.

LSUpdater version 1.84 sees it, but whatever options I try it says: "Partition not found. Aborting firmware update."

This is both with the new disk un-partitioned, and with a single partition formatted NTFS with GPT partitioning.

The format option in LSUpdater 1.84 is greyed out.  All the info I can find on the web refers to an earlier version of LSUpdater, so I will try to find that one.

Thanks for your help.

Check the .ini file and make sure the Unformatted variable is
set correctly to allow formatting. If the .ini says the disk
is not formatted, then formatting should then be allowed
in the GUI.

Edit LSUpdater.ini

[Flags]
VersionCheck = 0
NoFormatting = 1 <=== Make sure this one is defined this way.

[SpecialFlags]
Debug=1

( from: http://www.herzig-net.de/prog/?page=unbrick_ls-wxl )

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Paul wrote:

[snip]

NoFormatting = 1 <=== Make sure this one is defined this way.

[SpecialFlags]
Debug=1

( from: http://www.herzig-net.de/prog/?page=unbrick_ls-wxl )

But: <https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Enable_Debug_mode> suggests:

NoFormatting = 0

Tried both options - same error message.


--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Fri, 9/6/2024 5:01 AM, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:

[snip]

    NoFormatting = 1     <=== Make sure this one is defined this way. >>
    [SpecialFlags]
    Debug=1

( from:       http://www.herzig-net.de/prog/?page=unbrick_ls-wxl     )

But: <https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Enable_Debug_mode> suggests:

NoFormatting = 0

Tried both options - same error message.

OK, I've set up for this and tested it.

Name: ls200-v184--Linkstation-formatter.zip (In response to asking for LS210D materials...)
Size: 206,718,594 bytes (197 MiB)
SHA256: B8038C21C5339A6502ABEDB82EE7A87A40BEBC7297A979E6E41F8A12D6C0ED16

After setting up the extra lines in the LSUpdater.ini file, I started
it running as Administrator. This may be a bit deceptive... except if
it was offering to format a 3TB drive connected to the PC. Maybe TFTP needs this, but TFTP isn't exactly the most secure of things.

Instead (running as administrator and all), it would seem to be concentrating on contacting the device as it sits on the network. This suggests the
3TB drive (either an old drive or a new drive), is to sit *inside* the Linkstation. You fiddle with the LSUpdater panel until the Find locates
the device on the network. *Then* the option to format should be un-greyed.

That's all I can think, since the information content in the interface
of the thing, is not really sufficient for a firmware loading exercise.
the .ini file implies several devices use the same firmware.

The downloaded package (206 MB) has .img files, and at a guess these
are just being "dd" transferred to the disk when inside the Linkstation.
I see mention of TFTP as the protocol that might be used between
LSUpdater on a PC and Linkstation running in Emergency Mode and using
some onboard stub loader to interact with the user.

That's my guess at the moment. It just doesn't look to me, like the
quality of information in the .ini file, matches the application of
it directly yo a local disk in Vista on a PC. Instead, it makes
more sense for the "software to be useless unless a Buffalo product is detected".
That's part of why it must be done in the Linkstation, as it prevents
guys like me from debugging your local disk problem easily. That's
the whole purpose of the obfuscation.

And imagine if we called this grade of software developers "engineers" o.O
Fuck me. I could write an application this horrible... but I won't.
Why must the users distribute cooking recipes between one another
to maintain this product ??? Why doesn't the provided software
easily and fluidly support the product.

The Debug option by the way, is accessed from the *Title bar*. It did
take me a bit to figure that out, by stabbing at the interface
until I got lucky.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Paul wrote:

On Fri, 9/6/2024 5:01 AM, Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:

[snip]

    NoFormatting = 1     <=== Make sure this one is defined this way.

    [SpecialFlags]
    Debug=1

( from:       http://www.herzig-net.de/prog/?page=unbrick_ls-wxl     )

But: <https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Enable_Debug_mode> suggests:

NoFormatting = 0

Tried both options - same error message.

OK, I've set up for this and tested it.

Your evaluation noted.

The files come from: <https://www.buffalotech.com/support/downloads/linkstation-200-series>

This includes LSUpdater and several other files, including
initrd.buffalo and uImage.buffalo

I partition and format the new drive via a SATA-USB adapter connected to
a W7 PC as recently described. It shows a GPT partition of 2794.52 GB.
Please ignore all references to Vista.

I fit the new drive in the Buffalo NAS.

I connect the NAS directly to a laptop running the TFTP service, power
up, wait until I see 7 red flashes on the NAS, and press the function
button. The NAS collects initrd.buffalo and uImage.buffalo from the
TFTP server. During this process the laptop shows the NAS responding to
ping. Then the pings stop.

At this point I connect the NAS to my LAN, where from a PC I see the NAS
has acquired an IP address.

I think the files initrd.buffalo and uImage.buffalo are saved in the RAM
of the NAS and are running from there; as yet nothing has been written
to the disk.

On PC, run the Buffalo NAS Navigator. This sees the NAS, and shows it
is in Emergency Mode.

On PC edit LSUpdater.ini then run LSUpdater.exe where the GUI is
different from all the screenshots I've seen in sites such as:

<http://www.herzig-net.de/prog/?page=unbrick_ls-wxl>

Specifically, the option to format the disk is greyed out. This version
of LSUpdater is 1.84. I've seen suggestions on the web that the
partitioning and formatting capability has been removed, but was present
in earlier versions, perhaps as early as 1.60.

So I'm trying to find earlier versions, so far without success.

Th alternative would be to find a specification of the partitioning and formatting required, and use a tool that will run under Windows 7 to
prepare the new disk.


--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sat, 9/7/2024 2:55 AM, Graham J wrote:

Your evaluation noted.

The files come from: <https://www.buffalotech.com/support/downloads/linkstation-200-series>

This includes LSUpdater and several other files, including initrd.buffalo and uImage.buffalo

I partition and format the new drive via a SATA-USB adapter connected to a W7 PC as recently described.  It shows a GPT partition of 2794.52 GB. Please ignore all references to Vista.

I fit the new drive in the Buffalo NAS.

I connect the NAS directly to a laptop running the TFTP service, power up, wait until I see 7 red flashes on the NAS, and press the function button.  The NAS collects initrd.buffalo and uImage.buffalo from the TFTP server.  During this process the

laptop shows the NAS responding to ping.  Then the pings stop.

At this point I connect the NAS to my LAN, where from a PC I see the NAS has acquired an IP address.

I think the files initrd.buffalo and uImage.buffalo are saved in the RAM of the NAS and are running from there; as yet nothing has been written to the disk.

On PC, run the Buffalo NAS Navigator.  This sees the NAS, and shows it is in Emergency Mode.

On PC edit LSUpdater.ini then run LSUpdater.exe where the GUI is different from all the screenshots I've seen in sites such as:

<http://www.herzig-net.de/prog/?page=unbrick_ls-wxl>

Specifically, the option to format the disk is greyed out.  This version of LSUpdater is 1.84.  I've seen suggestions on the web that the partitioning and formatting capability has been removed, but was present in earlier versions, perhaps as early

as 1.60.

So I'm trying to find earlier versions, so far without success.

Th alternative would be to find a specification of the partitioning and formatting required, and use a tool that will run under Windows 7 to prepare the new disk.

Archived web pages don't always work properly.

They use a scheme of intermediate file generation, with an expiry time. In other words, anti-snapshot software.

https://web.archive.org/web/20161201160155/https://www.buffalotech.com/products/linkstation-200-series

https://web.archive.org/web/20161201160155/http://3865dc10959fb7ba66fc-
382cb7eb4238b9ee1c11c6780d1d2d1e.r18.cf1.rackcdn.com/ls200-v163.zip cannot be found. <===

But we have friends though, so all is not lost :-)

https://archive.org/details/ls200-v163

Name: ls200-v163.zip
Size: 204690939 bytes (195 MiB)
SHA256: A3D6D44A5FE6240614870752C87551AB6117FD9157D819D13E4C52D87B31213A

The file update.html contains release notes.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Paul wrote:

[snip]

But we have friends though, so all is not lost :-)

https://archive.org/details/ls200-v163

Name: ls200-v163.zip
Size: 204690939 bytes (195 MiB)
SHA256: A3D6D44A5FE6240614870752C87551AB6117FD9157D819D13E4C52D87B31213A

The file update.html contains release notes.

Thanks. Downloaded the ZIP file, will work on it later today.


--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:

[snip]

But we have friends though, so all is not lost :-)

https://archive.org/details/ls200-v163

    Name: ls200-v163.zip
    Size: 204690939 bytes (195 MiB)
    SHA256:
A3D6D44A5FE6240614870752C87551AB6117FD9157D819D13E4C52D87B31213A

    The file update.html contains release notes.

Thanks.  Downloaded the ZIP file, will work on it later today.

The file ls200-v163.zip contains an LSUpdater which almost exactly
matches the behaviour described in:

<http://www.herzig-net.de/prog/?page=unbrick_ls-wxl>

The process was even more straightforward: each stage completed with
"Firmware update complete" message, and the NAS was then immediately
accessible via a browser, in English. (Previously, with a model
LS-X1.0TL-EU it came up in Japanese and I had to look at a known good
device to navigate to the "change language" section.)

Thank you so much for your help.


--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sat, 9/7/2024 3:45 PM, Graham J wrote:

Graham J wrote:

Paul wrote:

[snip]

But we have friends though, so all is not lost :-)

https://archive.org/details/ls200-v163

    Name: ls200-v163.zip
    Size: 204690939 bytes (195 MiB)
    SHA256: A3D6D44A5FE6240614870752C87551AB6117FD9157D819D13E4C52D87B31213A

    The file update.html contains release notes.

Thanks.  Downloaded the ZIP file, will work on it later today.

The file ls200-v163.zip contains an LSUpdater which almost exactly matches the behaviour described in:

<http://www.herzig-net.de/prog/?page=unbrick_ls-wxl>

The process was even more straightforward: each stage completed with "Firmware update complete" message, and the NAS was then immediately accessible via a browser, in English.  (Previously, with a model LS-X1.0TL-EU it came up in Japanese and I had to

look at a known good device to navigate to the "change language" section.)

Thank you so much for your help.

Well, you do the work.

I just sit and watch on the sidelines :-)

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)