Unable to find HMNHD

[tryinghard]

I have 1TB Home Media Network Hard drive. Its is a 4 year old drive and has served well, until now. I am unable to connect to the drive. When I boot it, I can see a solid white light.

When I do ping the drive (with the name I had originally given), I get "Ping request could not find host <drive name>".

The fan of the drive seems to be running. The white light blinks for a send after every couple of minutes and flickers every once in a while.

Please help. Although I did backup some of the critical data, but a lot more is residing on the drive that I have not backed up and don't want to loose it.

I am non techie, so any help will be greatly appreciated.

note: is there a web interface for this drive? also, what if I do the button reset that is on the drive.

[Mijzelf]

Solid white is the preferred situation.

When I do ping the drive (with the name I had originally given), I get "Ping request could not find host <drive name>".

Can you have a look in the status page of your router, to see if the disks requests an IP address? And if yes, try to ping that address instead.

is there a web interface for this drive?

Well, yes. If you don't know that, how did you configure the box?

[tryinghard]

Thank you for the response.

When I do ping the drive (with the name I had originally given), I get "Ping request could not find host <drive name>". Can you have a look in the status page of your router, to see if the disks requests an IP address? And if yes, try to ping that address instead.

Can you please let me know what you mean looking at the status page of the router. So, I go to the website of my router and then do what. I am a complete non techie, so just oblivious of these steps.

is there a web interface for this drive?Well, yes. If you don't know that, how did you configure the box?

Well I configured it about 4 years ago, and since then have not needed the web interface, so now I don't even know what the web interface is.

[Mijzelf]

Can you please let me know what you mean looking at the status page of the router. So, I go to the website of my router and then do what. I am a complete non techie, so just oblivious of these steps.

The exact steps depend on your router. By default the NAS asks an IP address by DHCP. The router runs a DHCP server, and assigns one to the NAS. In most routers you can get a list of assigned DHCP addresses, in relation to the MAC addresses. Here you can identify all your devices. If needed you can find the vendor of the network interfaces here.

Once you have found the IP address of the NAS, you can try to reach it by Samba (Explorer) by typing \\<ip-of-nas> in the address bar. Of by browser by entering http://<ip-of-nas>/

If the NAS has a static address, this might not work, as it doesn't request an address. In that case a scanner might help. I have good experience with SoftPerfect Network Scanner. It can tell you all IP's in your network.

[tryinghard]

[quote="Mijzelf"The exact steps depend on your router. By default the NAS asks an IP address by DHCP. The router runs a DHCP server, and assigns one to the NAS. In most routers you can get a list of assigned DHCP addresses, in relation to the MAC addresses. Here you can identify all your devices. If needed you can find the vendor of the network interfaces here.
[/quote]

so I checked my DHCP client table, but could not find the NAS drive listed in the list of devices connected to the router. Can you please advice what to do next?

[Mijzelf]

In that case I guess your firmware is damaged. You can open the box, take the disk out, and connect it to a Linux system (any PC booted from a Linux Live CD or -USB stick will do). This should recognize the filesystem on the data partition, and you should be able to copy your data elsewhere.

After that you can reinstall the firmware. If your skip step Data Partition this should not touch your data, but you'll have to re-create the shares, as the configuration is factory default.