Info Help for old Lenovo EMC NAS units, IX2, PX4 etc

[mikeford]

Long threads in the hot deals section of forum, time to move support to the proper forum section IMHO. I have 2 of each IX2 and PX4, and know the most about those specific models, but I am far from being knowledgeable, so thread here is for me to ask for help as well as give it when I can.

Lenovo PX4-400D NAS no drives dropped to $99 w free shipping

I made a thread to put support issues in, https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/help-for-old-lenovo-emc-nas-units-ix2-px4-etc.2609187/ These are no longer supported by Lenovo, the main software EMC was sold off to Dell, which will not be supporting old Lenovo stuff either. Several threads with...

forums.anandtech.com

Lenovo/EMC 2-bay PX2-300D ($99.99), IX2 ($59.99) and 4-bay IX4-300D ($109.99) NAS units @ Newegg (Sold by Centrix Intl.)

Now have a PX2-300D for $99, diskless. It has a screen, and what appears to be hot-swap caddies. Unfamiliar otherwise with this unit, and what firmware features it may have. Anyone care to comment? No reviews yet @ Newegg. Sold by the same seller as the other Lenovo/EMC units, "Centrix...

forums.anandtech.com

Lenovo ix2 2-bay Gigabit NAS (no drives) $49.99 + ship @ TigerDirect.com

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8511612&Sku=LCU-101759700 Seems like this model is discontinued? Half the price of the QNAP 2-bay TS-212P that was on sale recently at Newegg for $99.99 FS. Might be worth looking into. Edit: Newegg link for...

forums.anandtech.com

Last thread link is from 7+ years ago when the IX2 first went on clearance and I bought one. This is the PRO side, they are quality units, mine up 24/7 with a pair of WD Red drives 7 years. CON side is that all of these NAS are old, End of Life little real support from Lenovo, but some files etc are still around, and besides myself a number of others bought one or more when they were offered cheap starting last year. Links in top thread are still selling units, but given all we now know and don't know these are not hot deals unless you like a lot of adventure in your deals.

Threads exists if you look for them or I get around to linking them here of people installing some version of Linux and making various software and hardware upgrades.

 

[SamirD]

I have a px6-300d and have pulled all the drives before and it will still boot from what I remember and just say there are no drives. People are written over the stock firmware on the unit by removing all the drives and booting a usb by pressing F12, so my thinking is that there is a firmware there. I would definitely try it first as that would be the great if it 'just works'. And please let us know as information on these units is hard to find.

 

[Agent13]

SamirD,
I installed 4 of the 6 2TB drives that came from my PX6. These still had the 20GB partition. I had to press the reset to clear the IP address and then was able to access unit thru the user interface. I got the "device is in an inconsistent state" msg on bootup, but was able to access the drive management screen, delete drive data, setup the storage pool, create the volume and shares. I mapped the PX4 to my PC and copied a couple of TB of files. Everything worked as my PX6 does. Transfer speed was identical, ~75MB/sec over my network. The PX4 had vintage firmware v4.1.308.34385 (11/13/2017) and BIOS ver DR007. I installed the latest firmware 4.1.414.34909 without issue, but BIOS didn't update. My PX6 runs ver 0122. This PX4 was setup as a network video recorder. It identifies itself as that on the status page. I wonder if the BIOS is unique for the video recording function. How did Lenovo update the BIOS on these units?

 

[SamirD]

Nice! BIOS probably was never a field update. If it's working fine at full speed, I'd leave it alone. The strongest feature these have is that they work and will never stop short of a hardware failure because they won't 'upgrade themselves to death'.