5big lost username password and cannot reset to factory.

[slickdaddy]

I have the original 5big ver 1 . I have lost the username password to access the drive. I have tried resetting the drive as per instructions on the lacie website, without luck. I connected each drive to a pc to verify if any drives were not functioning, but the all passes hd tune. Does anyone have any idea how to reset this unit. could something be corrupt in the firmware preventing the reset? any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Mijzelf]

A factory reset actually is an erase of the raid array on /dev/sd[abcde]9, and an erase of /dev/sd[abcde]10. This is done by the initial rootfs on /dev/sda7, which is never changed. On boot /dev/sda7 is mounted read-only, and it assembles a layered filesystem of the raid arrays on /dev/sd[abcde]8 and /dev/sd[abcde]9, where --8 contains the original firmware, and --9 all modifications. (User settings, firmware updates, ...). After assembling the new fs is used.
Futher the rootfs in /dev/sda7 handles the factory reset. As this filesystem never changes it's highly unlikely that a firmware error could prevent a factory reset.

I can think of two reasons why it doesn't work for you:

• a hardware error. If the button is defect, or the red led, it's hard to reset.
• (Maybe) a damaged filesystem on /dev/sd[abcde]9. Cannot remember if this filesystem is renewed, or if it is cleared. In the latter case it has to be mounted first, and a filesystem error could prevent that

The only work around I can think of is a manual reset. Do you have the possibility to connect all disks simultaneously to a PC?

[slickdaddy]

Currently I do not ,but can get a sata card in order to do so. What is the process after they are all connected?

[Mijzelf]

Boot the system in Linux, find the 5 disks:

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cat /proc/partitions

I'll assume the 5 disks are sdb, sdc, sdd, sde and sdf.
Assemble the raid array on partitions 9:

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su
mdadm --assemble /dev/md0 /dev/sdb9 /dev/sdc9 /dev/sdd9 /dev/sde9 /dev/sdf9

Mount the array

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mkdir -p /tmp/mountpoint
mount /dev/md0 /tmp/mountpoint

and delete the contents[/code]cd /tmp/mountpoint
rm -fr *[/code]unmount it and stop the array

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cd /
umount /tmp/mountpoint
mdadm --stop /dev/md0

Then erase all partitions 10

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dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb10
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc10
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd10
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sde10
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdf10

Oh, and mark the disks before you remove the disks from the NAS. The sequence is not important as long everything works fine, but if you ever need to repair the data raid array it can be important.