Older Linkstation Access - Got In

[olds]

Update Got in by enabling smbv1. Disconnected from internet too.


UPDATE

Got the web access to work by port forwarding. But, it's asking for a username and password. The username and password for the linkstation doesn't work and there was no place to set that up in web access.


OP

I have had a Linkstation for years that has files on it but I haven't used it in a couple years.

I can't access that files on it.
Navigator can see the Linkstation. It shows in the PC Network. If I double click it, it takes me to "PCast and DLNA Media Server Settings". I enabled it thinking if it was a media server I could see the files, but no luck.

When I try to set us web access I get an error each time: "UPnP Gateway not found and/or doesn't support port forwarding, use manual setup". I have no idea what that means and I see no option for manual set up.

If I take the drive out and put in a case will I be able to read it or is it protected?

 

[Tech Junky]

Drive is in Linux format but you should be able to get your data with a USB boot to Linux. Probably needs a hard reset.

 

[Fallen Kell]

The default user: "root"/"admin" and password: "password" do not work? I believe you can hold down one of the buttons on power up to force it to do a factory default reset (it takes like 20-30 seconds of holding it and then a few minutes for it to complete the reset and restart on its own).

 

[olds]

Default combo doesn't work and neither do the ones I changed too. I'll try a reset.

 

[olds]

Drive is in Linux format but you should be able to get your data with a USB boot to Linux. Probably needs a hard reset.

@Tech Junky
Something like Knoppix?

​

 

[Tech Junky]

@Tech Junky
Something like Knoppix?

​

Any Linux distro should work. The drive is in ext format. Simplest would be Ubuntu as it natively supports it on boot.

 

[olds]

I am seeing another possible issue online.
SMBv1 was updated and it's possible this older system may be looking for it.
I see a way to enable it in powershell but it doesn't work.

 

[Tech Junky]

SMBv1

That's been obsolete for awhile now. You can go into control panel and software and then on the left enable service and tick the box to test it.

I haven't used a linkstation though in years and they were pretty flakey to begin with. I had one that the drive died in and another one I eventually stripped the drive from to use in something else.

I'd cut my losses with it and take the drive and put it into something better or at least copy to a new drive that performs better. I put a few drives into a PC and turned on file sharing instead and get 400+MB/s out of them in raid 10. Since you're at this crossroads now it's time to think about better options. Nas boxes are slow and have very little air movement due to the lack of space and tiny fan. Drives tend to die quicker without good ventilation.

 

[olds]

Enabling smbv1 worked, going to get the files off of it.
Thanks

 

[Tech Junky]

So, that gets you into the LS w/o removing the drive? Usually it's the other way around if the LS defaulted itself somehow and didn't re-enable SMBv2/3.

 

[olds]

So, that gets you into the LS w/o removing the drive? Usually it's the other way around if the LS defaulted itself somehow and didn't re-enable SMBv2/3.

Yes. When I removed the drive, it couldn't be read in Windows. So I put it back in the case and enabled SMBv1 and it worked as a normal NAS.
Now I have to get the data off is which is agonizing slow. Just copying 29 GB of music in one folder says "more than one day". I have about 800 GB to transfer.
But the LS in on the network and I am backing up to a 1 TB USB 3 thumb drive.

 

[Tech Junky]

@olds

Sometimes you can plug in a USB drive to the NAS itself to make a backup quicker. Not sure which model you're working with but, then again it's a LS and they're pretty no frills and probably have a USB2 port on it. The other option would be hooking it directly to your PC with Ethernet and maybe eek out a bit more speed. Chances are though it's just the crappy controller slowing things down. LS for me was a cheap novelty item before seriously digging into data / networking for performance. Even moving up to a removable disk NAS setup was a bit better but, still didn't do it for me compared to just using a PC w/ Linux file sharing enabled through samba.

I can push 125MB/s over wifi and 400+ over Ethernet at this point. If I want to skip networking I can plug in a USB4 40gbps drive to the server directly and copy to the NVME inside which is faster than the drives inside the server.

But, you could pull the data directly from the drive if you booted into Linux with a USB drive and then just pull the data over the SATA connection at much higher speeds internally from one disk to the other. Windows sucks when it comes to copies though in terms of speed either way. There are some tricks and utils that you can use to speed it up if the source/dest were quicker to begin with.

It all depends on a few things though as to how deep you want to go in setting up your new storage.
- cost
- speed
- DIY or off the shelf

It's not that complicated as it's the same as turning on file sharing on your PC. They just put it in a pretty package and all you do is add disks. In reality you can do it in the GUI from the disks utility in Linux or go into the CLI and know exactly what's being put into the config files. If you want a clean / cheap setup you could go SFF PC for ~$150 for the OS side and then plug a DAS into it for the disks for ~$175 which puts you inline with most cheap 4 bay NAS off the shelf but get better performance from it. Or just grab a used PC off your favorite site and slot the drives into that instead of using new HW to get more CPU power if you do anything that requires more HP like transcoding media for playback.

 

[olds]

@olds

Sometimes you can plug in a USB drive to the NAS itself to make a backup quicker. Not sure which model you're working with but, then again it's a LS and they're pretty no frills and probably have a USB2 port on it. The other option would be hooking it directly to your PC with Ethernet and maybe eek out a bit more speed. Chances are though it's just the crappy controller slowing things down. LS for me was a cheap novelty item before seriously digging into data / networking for performance. Even moving up to a removable disk NAS setup was a bit better but, still didn't do it for me compared to just using a PC w/ Linux file sharing enabled through samba.

I can push 125MB/s over wifi and 400+ over Ethernet at this point. If I want to skip networking I can plug in a USB4 40gbps drive to the server directly and copy to the NVME inside which is faster than the drives inside the server.

But, you could pull the data directly from the drive if you booted into Linux with a USB drive and then just pull the data over the SATA connection at much higher speeds internally from one disk to the other. Windows sucks when it comes to copies though in terms of speed either way. There are some tricks and utils that you can use to speed it up if the source/dest were quicker to begin with.

It all depends on a few things though as to how deep you want to go in setting up your new storage.
- cost
- speed
- DIY or off the shelf

It's not that complicated as it's the same as turning on file sharing on your PC. They just put it in a pretty package and all you do is add disks. In reality you can do it in the GUI from the disks utility in Linux or go into the CLI and know exactly what's being put into the config files. If you want a clean / cheap setup you could go SFF PC for ~$150 for the OS side and then plug a DAS into it for the disks for ~$175 which puts you inline with most cheap 4 bay NAS off the shelf but get better performance from it. Or just grab a used PC off your favorite site and slot the drives into that instead of using new HW to get more CPU power if you do anything that requires more HP like transcoding media for playback.

I'll probably try the highlighted. I am mostly backing up music, docs and pics.
Thanks