Chris Paquin

AI, Virtualization, Containers, Infrastructure, Linux

How to Fix the Buffalo Linkstation NAS – Partition Not Found Error

Buffalo-LinkStation-220-1024x576-e90e950d78fb74df

Recently I picked up a Buffalo Linkstation 220 to play around with at home as I felt that I could use a bit of additional storage to play around with. Note that this previous statement is pretty much a lie. I have tons of storage, and was really just looking for an new toy to play around with. Basically I just had a few disks laying around that I wanted to put to use.

However, much to my dismay the I was unable to configure the device once I shoved in the disks, powered it up, and connected to it with the Buffalo Smart Phone Navigator. I figured that this was not a big deal however, so I tried the installable Windows App from my Windows 7 Vm. The Buffalo NAS Navigator was also able to connect to the device, however the device showed that it was currently booted in what was called “Emergency Mode”.

Not sensing a real emergency, I did not panic.

See borrowed image below.

buffalo_unbrick_001

Fortunately the site that I borrowed the above image from (here) and this site (here) give advice on how to fix the issue. First step is to download the Buffalo Linkstation Firmware Updater that you can get here. Both pages advise you to modify the LSUpdater.ini file. However their instructions did not work for me. The exact changes, and the LSUpdater.ini in its entirety are below.

[Application]
Title = BUFFALO LinkStation Series Updater Ver.1.62
WaitReboot = 1200
WaitFormat = 600
WaitFileSend = 600
WaitDiscover = 120

[Target]
ProductID = 0x80000000
ProductID2 = 0x0000001D
ProductID3 = 0x0000300D
ProductID4 = 0x0000300E
ProductID5 = 0x00003011

Name = LinkStation

[Flags]
VersionCheck = 0
NoFormatting = 0

[SpecialFlags]
Debug = 1

At this point you launch the updater again, and select “Update“. This fully partitions the drives and then updates the firmware. This process takes a while, so be patient. Now you can launch the NAS Navigator and configure the device.

Comments

50 responses to “How to Fix the Buffalo Linkstation NAS – Partition Not Found Error”

  1. bs Avatar
    bs

    Perfect. Updating now… thanks!

    Reply
  2. PD Avatar
    PD

    Thanks a ton. Mine is now working !!

    Reply
  3. nickohs Avatar
    nickohs

    Spent all morning trying to figure this out…. formatting now, perfect, thanks a bunch!

    Reply
  4. Brent Avatar
    Brent

    Well done updated both the version check and no formatting from 1 to 0 and mine is now formatting.

    Thanks

    Reply
  5. Dorde Nenezic Avatar
    Dorde Nenezic

    Can you please tell me how to adjust LSUpdater.ini for ver, 1.71, it would be much apreciated

    Reply
  6. honggildong Avatar
    honggildong

    Thanks!
    ver 1.71 :
    [Flags]
    VersionCheck = 0
    NoFormatting = 0

    [SpecialFlags]
    Debug = 1

    Reply
  7. puttyflame Avatar
    puttyflame

    Thank you for your post.
    Does this procedure delete the data on the nas?

    Reply
    1. Christopher Paquin Avatar
      Christopher Paquin

      I would say yes, although I would have to try it to be sure. This procedure does partition the drive, so it probably also creates a file system on the drive. This should wipe any old data.

      Reply
    2. Stavox Networks Avatar
      Stavox Networks

      It does. I can vouch for that.

      Reply
  8. puttyflame Avatar
    puttyflame

    Thank you for your post.

    Dose this procedure delete the data on the nas?

    Reply
  9. Championship Winner Avatar
    Championship Winner

    Awesome Fix Thank you

    Reply
  10. Simon Windisch Avatar
    Simon Windisch

    Many thanks, this worked for me.

    Reply
  11. Gary Avatar
    Gary

    Thank you so much for this article. I’ve been searching Buffalo forums for over 4 hours and nothing. The hardware on these Buffalo seems ok but the software really really sucks. I suppose once you go through an installation its easier but the first time user the docs really suck.

    Reply
  12. Anil Avatar
    Anil

    Thanks for the post. My NAS drive (LS-XL) is in Emergency mode so i tried to do an update as you have written above. I initially was getting “Partition not found. Aborting Firmware Update” but after changing the debug settings it then gives an error of “Format Failed. Update Aborted”

    Reply
    1. Jese Avatar
      Jese

      Did you get any solution about it?

      Reply
  13. attilajr Avatar
    attilajr

    Thanks a million. Clear…concise..and competent advice. Worked flawlessly to save a DS220DE I just picked up. Bravo!

    Reply
  14. Hugo Avatar
    Hugo

    Thank you very much!! You are the best!!

    Reply
  15. Terence Avatar
    Terence

    getting further with this change than with the Buffalo website however I am getting a message that the format failed and operation aborted. So still in the same boat as before …. 😦

    Reply
  16. kaszac Avatar
    kaszac

    You’re a lifesaver. I thought I was going to have to send the enclosure back. Thanks!

    Reply
  17. andru183 Avatar
    andru183

    I owe you a beer, cheers for the help!

    Reply
  18. Bart Eccles Avatar
    Bart Eccles

    Excellent post. I have just bought an enclosure and put 2 Seagate 2TB disks in after deleting everything on them and initializing them. The firmware updater said there was no partition and aborted. After finding this post I made the necessary changes and it worked perfectly.
    Thanks very much.

    Reply
    1. Christopher Paquin Avatar
      Christopher Paquin

      Great to hear this got you working

      Reply
  19. Mr J Hibbard Avatar
    Mr J Hibbard

    This has just helped me too thanks for such an old post still working today. Buffalo should sort this out really

    Reply
  20. Alex Baby Avatar
    Alex Baby

    Yesterday i bought a Buffalo LS220DE NAS. From the start of my installation process, it was showing in the “Emergency Mode”. Later i tried to format, then it says “Partition Not found” error. As per your suggestion i changed “LSUpdater.ini” file. Now I am getting another message “Format Failed, Update aborted”. Will you please suggest what to try out next?

    Reply
    1. Christopher Paquin Avatar
      Christopher Paquin

      Are the disks you are trying to use new, or have they been used before? It’s possible that you might need to format them individually before loading them into the NAS.

      Reply
      1. Gaudy Avatar
        Gaudy

        Hi, its really necesary format the HDDs? because I’ve important information. Isnt there another way to get this working?

  21. Alex Baby Avatar
    Alex Baby

    Thank you for the immediate response.

    Yes, Hard Disks are brand new. I will format Hard Disks on Desktops and try again. Update you after that.

    A

    Reply
  22. Alex Baby Avatar
    Alex Baby

    Thanks, it is working now. I formatted the Hard Drives on my PC and connected.
    Great!!!

    Reply
    1. Son Truong Avatar
      Son Truong

      I got the same issue, may I ask how you how to format HDD in PC, and what type of partition you used ?
      I used Gparted to pre-format my HDD but It still have the same error !

      Reply
      1. Alex Avatar
        Alex

        I formatted HDDs on Windows7 professional using NTFS file system.

  23. mayur Avatar
    mayur

    hi everyone,

    I have the TeraStation Pro – TS-1.0TGL/R5 sires, in that 4 HDD 250GB each, Im trying to use dell poweredge 2900 server HDD i.e. total 4 HDD 1TB each.

    I have edited above given script and change following value

    [Application]
    WaitReboot = 1200
    WaitFormat = 600
    WaitFileSend = 600
    WaitDiscover = 120

    [Target]
    ProductID = myproductID

    Name = LinkStation

    [Flags]
    VersionCheck = 0
    NoFormatting = 0

    [SpecialFlags]
    Debug = 1

    but its giving massage that terastation can’t respond for 600 sec.

    Also I cleared the RAID cong before using the same SERVER HDD.

    Please help me to sort it out….

    Thanks to everyone in Advance
    Mayur Tamhane

    Reply
  24. Warren Avatar
    Warren

    Wish I found your post two days ago. It’s been a long haul but thanks to you I’m up and running.

    Thanks,
    Warren

    Reply
  25. david finch Avatar
    david finch

    wont this destroy data on the drive

    Reply
    1. Christopher Paquin Avatar
      Christopher Paquin

      Yes, if you need to pull data from the drive, I believe that you can plug one of the drives directly into your PC and read it without issue (if your drives were Raid1). Just need an external drive reader or dock. Raid0, I’ve never tried it. Filesystem will be striped across both drives, instead of copied to each drive (as in Raid1 mirroring)

      Reply
      1. Nick Avatar
        Nick

        My Drives were configured as RAID 1*, so when the NAS “lost” the array after a firmware update, I was able to remove them, boot my laptop from a linux live cd (I chose Knoppix), connect the disk using an external drive enclosure and access my data.
        The disks are formatted with XFS format which Windows doesn’t natively read. A paid product, windows explorer is supposed to be able to read XFS, but I didn’t buy it.

        This post was very useful when I purchased a new pair of drives, I needed the .ini file changes in this post to force the disk partitioning. Thanks for creating it.

        This process will definitely destroy any data on the disks in the NAS.

        *If you only had a RAID 0, not a RAID 1 array, then your data would be striped across both disks and If they are both still intact, you would need to do some quite fancy stuff in linux to rejoin them as a set, but basically, unless you’re a real XFS filesystem expert, your data is lost. RAID 0 is only a good choice if you can easily afford to lose the data, and you absolutely must have the extra performance and capacity.
        These days, 2 mirrored RAID 0 sets would be the best option for this, or RAID 10 as it is known.

    2. Nick Avatar
      Nick

      yes. absolutely

      Reply
  26. Silli Avatar
    Silli

    I just bought new one and it was bricked right out of packet. No help with buffalo help desk. Now with your instruction, I got it working and no need to return it. This is very bad product I must say.

    Reply
  27. Enrique Avatar
    Enrique

    Thank you!!!

    Reply
  28. David Avatar
    David

    Thank you, My terastation is up and running

    Reply
  29. mail@online.de Avatar
    mail@online.de

    Thanks, it is working now.
    Great!!!

    Reply
  30. paul Avatar
    paul

    Thanks, worked nicely for me.

    Reply
  31. Davidenko Avatar
    Davidenko

    For the model LS-WXL, I only modified the original .ini in the updater folder, with adding the last strings you mentioned:

    [Flags]
    VersionCheck = 0
    NoFormatting = 0

    [SpecialFlags]
    Debug = 1
    Worked! Now the last firmware is up and working, I need just to modify language.
    Thank you!

    Reply
  32. david.yurik@gmail.com Avatar
    david.yurik@gmail.com

    absolutely one of the really necessary times the internet and google have saved me. this came up in one of the first 3 or 4 links to the EM / format error. i used your .ini exactly as written and within 15 minutes my NAS drive is up and running. Thank you so much Christopher !! You are the bomb diggity !!

    Dave Yurik

    Reply
  33. a happy bunny Avatar
    a happy bunny

    You are gorgeous. Thank you for posting this. It worked like a dream (albeit with a bit of a wait). Thanks, thanks, thanks.

    Reply
  34. Ed MANEVAL-SHAFFER Avatar
    Ed MANEVAL-SHAFFER

    Dude! Perfection. I’ve been fighting with this for a year and you just fixed it in 20 minutes!

    Reply
  35. Stavox Networks Avatar
    Stavox Networks

    Thanks for this Christopher. I couldnt figure out why I did not have the debug tab in LSUpdater. Your contribution did the trick! Thanks so much!

    Reply
  36. Alejo Saucedo Avatar
    Alejo Saucedo

    Curiously, I have done all this with a LS-CHL. As I recovered my info I have no problem at all for play with versions and options. I’m stuck at the time for format the drive (actually I have try 3 different HDDs, and played with formatting them previously in Win10, Linux, and XP.

    I even prepare a PC with WinXP as I found evidence for this old NAS boxes, Lsupdaters and TFTPs that works better.

    For all you folks who are having problems to arrive from E07 to E06 state: indeed on the first red led > press button you are safe to disabling AV and FireWall manually 192.168.11.1/24 on your PC the “Blocks served” will arrive sooner or latter.

    The big trouble follows then: the NAS must reset at least its Eth port after 16-18 secs. and then show STEADY BLUE led, no more flashing, and the NAS will require a regular DHCP request.

    I’m able to move on the fly the NAS to a DHCP server enabled LAN, see the NAS assigned IP, ping successfully to that address and all seems to be OK with the Network.

    At this point, no matter which Lsupdater version I use (1,74, 1.68, 1.65, and others from similar ARM processor family) no matter which changes I did to .ini and no matter which combination of left/right section of debug mode I activated: no joy, same error “Partition not found” immediately the software tries to start to format the HDD.

    I’m considering to Knoppix hack the .buffalo files from software to make the partitions and disk structure via the PC.

    Does someone have had this same problems?

    On the forums I just found a guy who pretended to hack the updaters and asks Buffalo for $50K for fix all their mess regarding their software.

    Reply
    1. Balajee Avatar
      Balajee

      Yes I have the same problem on LS 220D. I made a 1GB partition in my HDD (EXT3) and stored the files firmware files (initrd.buffalo and ulmage.buffalo) maybe that is the reason. I will try to format the HDD with only one partition and retry tomorrow

      Reply
  37. Paul B. Avatar
    Paul B.

    You, sir, are a legend. Thank you!

    Reply
  38. Keith D. Avatar
    Keith D.

    Bringing on line a LS441DE – seen on the network plugged directly into a FIOS Ethernet port. Have device in emergency mode so downloaded firmware updater. Updater V1.88 started, and update clicked after device found. After about 5 seconds receive “Partition not found. Aborting firmware update.” Anyone seen this before and know how to proceed next?

    Reply

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