Project #1 – Revitalizing Buffalo LS-WXL – Part 1

 1.1) Re-flashing with original firmware

First step to unbrick the NAS was to re-flash with original firmware. To do this we have to use TFTP to upload a bootloader to the Buffalo LinkStation.

Since I brought a couple of WD Red 4TBs, I had to install both disks before-hand. After that, I tried to boot the NAS but it wouldn’t show up on my router nor be discovered by NAS Navigator. So I needed to recover the equipment by re-flashing it.

Warning: I’m not responsible if you brick the NAS when following this article. I wrote it to future Kenny and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t care enough!

Kenny

This operation is well documented at http://forums.buffalotech.com/index.php?topic=10185.0 so I won’t go into details, but the LS-WXL R1.0 was a kirkwood variant, so it was more difficult to get the correct TFTP package. Fortunately the forums were helpful and I got the link for the correct version: http://www.mediafire.com/file/pthb2mg7l830j4i/TFTP_KirkwoodVariants.exe

I should note that instead of connecting the NAS directly to the computer, I used a router specifically for this, so I could manually assign IPs to both nodes, it helps a lot when flashing the NAS!!! A lot!

Now just follow this great article: http://www.herzig-net.de/prog/?page=unbrick_ls-wxl it works perfectly! Andreas write-up is great and there isn’t really nothing I can add to the procedure.

Considering all went well, you should be able to access webgui as expected.

Dear Kenny, if this doesn’t work, get a new NAS… really… this thing is sooooo limited! Remember when booting Debian failed because it didn’t had enough memory? You had to increase tmpfs usage to 18%! The usual % didn’t get to the mandatory 16 MB… lol.

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• Kenny
• 31/01/2019
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