Restoring a Lacie 2Big Network v2 after disk crash

[Leon]

Hi,

I lately ran into a problem with some Lacie 2Big Network v2 NAS units and had to restore the firmware onto the disks - for those who dont know - these damn units have the firmware on the actual disks and not in a ROM (ARGHHHH!!!!) - and speaking with Lacies support is jumping out an airplane and hoping it wont hurt.. it will.. trust me.

Anyway, after some (alot) of Googling i found the solution, but it was bits here and there and nothing that really got the job done fully - so... hopefully this post will help out people.

First of all.. some reference points:
 - http://lacie.nas-central.org/wiki/Installing_firmware_on_fresh_disks_(2Big_2)(the big one, but not the entire solution)

Cache copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20180210210928/http://lacie.nas-central.org/wiki/Installing_firmware_on_fresh_disks_(2Big_2) 

   YOU NEED TO READ THE ABOVE LINK BEFORE GOING ON

Requirements:

a. A 2Big Network v2 NAS (other models might be supported as well)

b. A machine running Ubuntu (or some other debian based linux)

c. 2x Disks of the same brand/model/size ... others might work as well

d. You have downloaded all of the files attached to this post.

 

How-to:

1) Start by connecting the first disk via USB to your Linux machine and run "fdisk -l" to find out the device path .. in my case its /dev/sdd

2) Init the disk by running: gzip -dc //mbr+label.gz | dd of=/dev/sdd

(Take a moment to understand what we are doing there)

3) Now we need to fire up fdisk to recreate the partition scheme (Run: fdisk /dev/sdd) - mine looks like this:
 

Device     Boot   Start          End                Sectors           Size        Id      Type

/dev/sdd1           63             4016249        4016187         1.9G        5       Extended

/dev/sdd2           4018176   1953525167 1949506992    929.6G    fd      Linux raid autodetect

/dev/sdd5           126           514079          513954           251M       fd     Linux raid autodetect

/dev/sdd6           518144     620543          102400           10M         83    Linux

/dev/sdd7           622592     724991          102400           10M         fd     Linux raid autodetect

/dev/sdd8           727040     2365439        1638400         500M       fd     Linux raid autodetect

/dev/sdd9           2367488   4005887        1638400         1200M     fd     Linux raid autodetect

After you have created the above config, its time to run some commands on the disk.

This is how it looks like (get a copy in step2.sh):
(IMPORTANT: If your disk is called anything else than /dev/sdd you have to change that in the below lines)
 

echo -------- preparing raid arrays --------

echo -- Fixing /dev/sdd5 - swap

mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdd5 missing --metadata=0.90

mkswap -f /dev/md0

mdadm --stop /dev/md0

 

 

echo -- Fixing /dev/sdd7 - initfs

mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdd7 missing --metadata=0.90

mke2fs -j /dev/md0

mkdir /tmp/md0

mount /dev/md0 /tmp/md0

cd /tmp/md0

tar xzf /home/lsb/Desktop/lacie/sda7.tgz

cd ..

umount /tmp/md0

mdadm --stop /dev/md0

 

 

echo -- fixing /dev/sdd8 - ro layer rootfs

mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdd8 missing --metadata=0.90

mke2fs -j /dev/md0

mount /dev/md0 /tmp/md0

cd /tmp/md0

tar xzf /home/lsb/Desktop/lacie/sda8.tgz

cd ..

umount /tmp/md0

mdadm --stop /dev/md0

 

 

echo -- Fixing /dev/sdd9 - rw layer rootfs

mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdd9 missing --metadata=0.90

mke2fs -j  /dev/md0

mdadm --stop /dev/md0

 

 

echo -- Fixing /dev/sdd2 - data partition

mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdd2 missing --metadata=0.90

mkfs.xfs -f /dev/md0

mdadm --stop /dev/md0

 

 

echo -- Fixing /dev/sdd6 - kernel

gzip -cd /home/lsb/Desktop/lacie/sda6.gz | dd of=/dev/sdd6

 

 

... now repeat the above on disk2, pop in the disks, start your NAS and you sound see it come online again.

Hope it helps somebody out there from alot of headaches.

Files:
 - http://files.osxlatitude.com/leon/Lacie/lacie1.zip

[lucattelli]

Hi Leon! I had the same problem as you did. I also found the original article you linked to, but wasnt able to replicate the fdisk partitioning represented there. Yours worked just fine, thank you so much for sharing this information with us.

 

I added a intermediate step to your step1.sh and step2.sh, which basically partitions the disk as required. Its contents follows below:

# As Ubuntu 16.04 sometimes automatically mounts after step1.sh, this unmount them all before we continue.
mdadm --stop /dev/md*
# now, to the partitioning section
(
# partition /dev/sdd2
echo n
echo p
echo 2
echo 4018176
echo 1953525167
echo t
echo 2
echo fd
# partition /dev/sdd6
echo n
echo 518144
echo 620543
echo t
echo 6
echo 83
# partition /dev/sdd7
echo n
echo 622592
echo 724991
echo t
echo 7
echo fd
# partition /dev/sdd8
echo n
echo 727040
echo 2365439
echo t
echo 8
echo fd
# partition /dev/sdd9
echo n
echo 2367488
echo 4005887
echo t
echo 9
echo fd
# save all changes
echo w
) | fdisk /dev/sdd
# this last part is needed because sometimes fdisk hangs at this batch procedure.
partprobe

Hope this helps other people out there.

[ronaldovn]

thanks for your information 

[Goggen]

Hi, I had the same problem - both disks in my Lacie 2Big crashed at the same time. So both were replaced. I followed this blog post to the letter, but was not able to make it work. The old disks were 2TB disks. The new ones were 4TB disks. So maybe this was the reason? I only used 2TB when I partitioned, to get the partition table identical to the one in this article.

 

They must have used a different fdisk version in the original article, because the partition table is totally different. And they list the Block size, not the Sector size, in the fifth column. What is a block anyway? And how big is it? And the Start and End in the original article partition table must be the cylinder?

 

I think the numbers in the Sectors columns in this osxlatitude article are wrong from the fourth line and down. sdd6 should be 50M, not 10M, right? 102400 sectors x 512 kB/sector = 52428800 kibi-B. Divide by 1024. You get: 51 200 mibi-B. Which is approximately 50 MegaByte.

If anybody has any input as to how to get my Lacie 2Big v2 up and running, I would be very grateful.

[Goggen]

Just for the record - after having completed this article - when I fire up the Lacie with the prepared disks, the box ends up with the two disk backlights solid blue - which is good. However the big frontlight blinks blue - forever. I think that means the box is still running its startup procedure. And it cant get out of it. Maybe the box itself is broken? I can not find the box on the network with the Lacie software tool.