# Simpleshare NAS 400



## tkish01

I'm attempting to connect a 400 GB simpleshare NAS exernal harddrive to my wireless network. The installation process goes smoothly until the NASfinder software asks me to designate a letter for the drive. After I designate the driver letter and hit next an error message pops up saying "could not MAP drive! Code 53 lplocalname =k:lpremotename=r". I've researched the code 53 and found out that it meant "This error is generally caused by the firewall that you are running on your system. This should not be caused by the hardware firewall that may be in your router, but a software firewall that is running on the system." 
I'm running windows XP Pro with Norton Internet Security 2005 plus Trend Micro Anti spy-ware 3.0. I disengaged the firewall from Norton and disabled the "Venus Flytrap" from Trend but I still keep getting the same error message. 
I've called Simpletech's tech support line twice and all they tell me is I must have a firewall some place that's preventing the connection.
Any suggestions that I might try??


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## lama12

*Simpletech simpleshare*

I have exactly the same problem. I spent some time on the horn with their tech support, who said that this had cropped up recently and may be due to a faulty firmware version (1.07). So he emailed me (7MB) the previous, 1.06 firmware version. It sounded hopeful, but after installing the new "old" firmware and rebooting, I get the exact same error message.

Have you had any success with other methods?


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## lama12

I actually got mine up and running finally. Company TechSupport was worthless. I am happy to share tips with anyone who is stuck - maybe it will help you. I see a lot of complaints about unit heat. I set the disk power management to power done after 10 minutes of inactivity - maybe that will control heat and prolong life.


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## johnwill

What was the "silver bullet" that got it working? I didn't chime in before, because I don't know anything about this unit.


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## lama12

*SimpleTech SimpleShare*

John, SimpleTech sent me a new bios, and then had me reinstall the 7.01 firmware. That still did not help. What seemed to get me over the hump was when I then hit the "reset factory defaults" tab in the web interface (a hard reset from the drive did not help).


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## johnwill

Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully it might help someone in the future. :smile:


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## bassobisso

lama12, I'm trying to use NAS 500 and I'm facing the same problem you got with NAS 400 (error code 53 when trying to map a drive on the SimpleShare through NasFinder), tried to contact [email protected] but didn't get any reply. Do you think the new BIOS version you used might work with NAS 500 ? If not do you have any idea on how to get a new BIOS for my NAS 500 ?


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## lama12

Bassobisso, the support people I dealt with were Patrick Tran [[email protected]] and Michael Miller [[email protected]]. Both seemed very familiar with this issue. I can forward you the bios they gave me and 7.01 or 8.01 (activates power management, but disables RAID mirror support) if you would like. Michael did mention that there are some HW differences between the 400GB and 500GB models (the 500GB supposedly uses a firmware 10.0 version that enables web access from outside of the network. So you may want to check with him on this first.


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## bassobisso

Thank you lama12 for the info. But I'm little bit confused about the firmware versions. My NAS 500 has a firmware version 1.07 and you mentioned that the 500GB might have - I quote - " a version 10.0 that enables web access from outside of the network" and the version numbers that you have are 7.01 & 8.01 . There is a big difference in the version numbers, no?
As you suggested I will try to contact Michael Miller and check with him which firmware version should I use and which BIOS would solve the problem.
Meanwhile I will appreciate it if you can forward the BIOS that you have with the installation instructions. Note that I have downloaded from Simpletech web site the firmware 1.07 for NAS 500 that I can use. Thank You.


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## lama12

*SimpleTech SimpleShare*

Bassobisso, pls, my apologies for sloppiness. My NAS came with firmware 1.07. I downgraded to 1.06, then installed a new bios and upgraded back to 1.07. Subsequently I upgraded again to 1.09 (never saw a 1.08). If you look at the SimpleTech website on iShare, it says 
"iShare Registration is only for firmware versions 1.10 and above.
-Firmware 1.10 is shipped with 500GB SimpleShare only"

When I asked Mike if I could get iShare, he said there were hardware differences between the 400 and 500GB models that made that impossible. So maybe you should be trying the 1.10? I am happy to forward you the files. They are 8MB each though. Please give me an email (send a private message I guess). We can also do it via Pando www.Pando.com.


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## zingalala

I am confused now. I know different firmware versions for the SimpleShare but what is the BIOS versions. I don't see any instruction for BIOS upgrade on SimpleTech's web site. Am I missing something?


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## johnwill

I'd be real careful about installing the BIOS for the wrong model, you could end up making yourself a doorstop!.


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## lama12

Zingala, the bios is something I obtained from SimpleTech. The installation is the same as for firmware.


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## zingalala

Can someone upload the all versions of BIOS for me to download? Please include the note on which BIOS version has what features (Kind of release notes).

Thanks,
zingalala


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## johnwill

Since you can access them directly, why would someone upload them anywhere?


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## zingalala

johnwill said:


> Since you can access them directly, why would someone upload them anywhere?


I have the firmwares. I wanted to get hold of BIOS version 7.01 and 8.01 with release notes.


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## johnwill

Aren't the BIOS versions on the site with the firmware?


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## lama12

not that i am aware of. The naming scheme is different too. The file they sent me is Update_CFE_1-3-6.trx. I have to say, now that it is up and running, having a NAS is NICE! And the 1.08 firmware actually enables the power management, so when nobody is home or is using the NAS, it is completely silent and cool - and will hopefully last forever. BTW, programs like Azureus have a nice feature so that you can download to you desktop, and only after the file is complete, it gets automatically moved to the NAS - again, keeping the NAS in wait state most of the time.


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## zingalala

lama12 said:


> not that i am aware of. The naming scheme is different too. The file they sent me is Update_CFE_1-3-6.trx. I have to say, now that it is up and running, having a NAS is NICE! And the 1.08 firmware actually enables the power management, so when nobody is home or is using the NAS, it is completely silent and cool - and will hopefully last forever. BTW, programs like Azureus have a nice feature so that you can download to you desktop, and only after the file is complete, it gets automatically moved to the NAS - again, keeping the NAS in wait state most of the time.



Can you please post the firmware with working power managment somewhere? You can upload it to http://rapidshare.de and post the link here.

Thanks


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## zingalala

One more piece of ifo for people interested in RAID features: The firmware 1.07 does not support disk spin down power management feature. They fixed the feature in firmware 1.09 but they also removed RAID functionality in 1.09. Work around: Keep 1.07 firmware. Hookup the HDD to IDE connector of you PC, boot using systemrescuecd, use smartmontools (smartctl -s off; smartctl -S off) to turn off the SMART monitoring on HDD. Plug back the HDD to SimpleShare. Now disk spin down will work but you will not have SMART monitoring feature. To me spin down is more important than SMART monitoring. You can peridically login to SimpleShare and check to see the RAID1 mirrors are in sync.

The future firmwares should have RAID features as per tech support but till then this work around should save life of your drive.


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## zingalala

Another work around for people who need RAID as well as power management.

As we know, disk spin down power management feature does not work with 1.07 firmware. But now since we have the telent. We can use "hdparm -S" command to set the power management timeout period on the drive itself!!

From hdparm man page:
-S
Set the standby (spindown) timeout for the drive. This value is used by the drive to determine how long to wait (with no disk activity) before turning off the spindle motor to save power. Under such circumstances, the drive may take as long as 30 seconds to respond to a subsequent disk access, though most drives are much quicker. The encoding of the timeout value is somewhat peculiar. A value of zero means "timeouts are disabled": the device will not automatically enter standby mode. Values from 1 to 240 specify multiples of 5 seconds, yielding timeouts from 5 seconds to 20 minutes. Values from 241 to 251 specify from 1 to 11 units of 30 minutes, yielding timeouts from 30 minutes to 5.5 hours. A value of 252 signifies a timeout of 21 minutes. A value of 253 sets a vendor-defined timeout period between 8 and 12 hours, and the value 254 is reserved. 255 is interpreted as 21 minutes plus 15 seconds. Note that some older drives may have very different interpretations of these values.

Download 1.07 firmware with telnet support at http://www.4wardlogic.com/SimpleShareFirmwareV1_07-telnet_v1.trx


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## johnwill

I'm using the Ximeta NDAS disks for backup here, as well as a Hawking HNAS1 unit. They all sit in the basement in a cinder block enclosure to protect them in case of a disaster, like a fire. :smile:


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## zingalala

For the record, I tried hdparm command (hdparm -S 50 /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc) in a telnet window. The command returned good message saying standby time was set to 4 minutes but the drive did not spin down. This was a quick test, I will try again tonight and report back.

Also I upgraded my SimpleShare with 300GB HDD. It was hard work since most of the time SimpleShare did not recognized new HDD. This is what I had to do:
1. Connect new HDD to IDE connector of a spare PC. Set the jumper of new HDD to CS (Cable Select)
2. Use any live linux CD (I used SysRescCd) and boot from the CD
3. Run QTParted (GUI Partition editor) and select the newly connected HDD. If you are not comfortable with Linux then I suggest you disconnect all other existing HDDs from the PC just to be safe). The new HDD will be listed as /dev/hda, /dev/hdb or something like that (hda: Primary master, hdb: Primary slave, hdc: Secondary master, hdd: Secondary slave)
4. Create a primary partition with fat32. Click save. This will create a partition on HDD. This step is sanity step so that we finally come up with really virgin drive without any partitions.
5. Now delete the created partition and again save. This will get you a virgin HDD.
6. Shutdown (shutdown -h now) the PC
7. Connect the new HDD into SimpleShare (For the record, once you open SimpleShare then warranty is void)
8. Connect the power to SimpleShare and wait for about 1 minute. You will notice drive spin up after few seconds. And finally blue LED will come on. If blue LED does not come on then SimpleShare did not recognized the HDD as well as it created hidden-nonfunctional partition on HDD.
9. If you do not see blue LED after 1 minutes then you need to go back to step 1 and start over!! I had to repeat step 1 to 8 for may be five times before I saw blue LED.
10. If you see blue LED light up then the drive is ready to be "claimed".
11. Open a web browser and type in IP address of SimpleShare. Go to "advanced setup" -> Disk management -> Basic. On this page, you will see new HDD and "Claim" link. Click on the "Claim" link. Next page, enter disk name and consent message and click "Claim". This will format the HDD and it should take less than a minute. If you see active green LED after 1 minutes then SimpleShare has messed up again. Start over from step 1. For me, it messed up two time on the "claim" step.
12. If the claim process finish successfully then you will get a pop-up message and you are done. Phew!! At this point you can start creating "Pools" and then "Shares" on the "Pools". If you are interested in mirrored Pool then you need to attach a virgin USB HDD and "Claim" USB HDD before you create the pool.

Hope this helps to someone.


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## johnwill

They should rename that thing to *Complex*Share! :grin:


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## zingalala

For some reason, HDD always being accessed by SimpleShare in some way so HDD will not go standby. I have verified that HDD actually supports standby (Most modern HDDs support standby) by issuing following command.
hdparm -y /dev/ide/host2/bus0/target0/lun0/disc

This command puts the SimpleShare into standby immediately. If I try to access SimpleShare drive from any Windows machine then SimpleShare wakes up by itself.

I am going to compare the firmware 1.07 and 1.09 and see how they fixed the standby web interface feature in 1.09. In the meantime, one more work around: Install cron on SimpleShare (ipkg can be found at openmss.org) and run "hdparm -y /dev/ide/host2/bus0/target0/lun0/disc" command every so often (may be 1 hr) using cron. This will ensure that SimpleShare goes to sleep after you are done accessing it (at least after an hour). This is not the best solution because the side effect would be that you will see brief access interruptions every hour even though you are using SimpleShare drive actively on some machine.


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## zingalala

I am not going to write or respond any more posts raltest to SimpleShare. If you have any questions or comments then please repond via following thread at openmss.org. That thread already have so much useful information about this device.

http://www.openmss.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=120


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## johnwill

Bye :smile:


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## vyellen

tkish01 said:


> I'm attempting to connect a 400 GB simpleshare NAS exernal harddrive to my wireless network. The installation process goes smoothly until the NASfinder software asks me to designate a letter for the drive. After I designate the driver letter and hit next an error message pops up saying "could not MAP drive! Code 53 lplocalname =k:lpremotename=r". I've researched the code 53 and found out that it meant "This error is generally caused by the firewall that you are running on your system. This should not be caused by the hardware firewall that may be in your router, but a software firewall that is running on the system."
> I'm running windows XP Pro with Norton Internet Security 2005 plus Trend Micro Anti spy-ware 3.0. I disengaged the firewall from Norton and disabled the "Venus Flytrap" from Trend but I still keep getting the same error message.
> I've called Simpletech's tech support line twice and all they tell me is I must have a firewall some place that's preventing the connection.
> Any suggestions that I might try??



Has happened only with Norton that came with machines. Uninstalled Norton and it works with McAfee VirusScan Enterprise.


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## ADent

zingalala said:


> OThe firmware 1.07 does not support disk spin down power management feature. They fixed the feature in firmware 1.09 but they also removed RAID functionality in 1.09. Work around: Keep 1.07 firmware. Hookup the HDD to IDE connector of you PC, boot using systemrescuecd, use smartmontools (smartctl -s off; smartctl -S off) to turn off the SMART monitoring on HDD. Plug back the HDD to SimpleShare. Now disk spin down will work but you will not have SMART monitoring feature.




Thanx for the post.

The systemrescuecd boot disk and smartctl -s off /dev/hdc worked like a charm when I put my disk back into my SimpleShare. (I did both -s and -S). I have v1.07.


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