LG NAS N4B1N

The LG N4B1N Diskless System 4 Bay Super Multi NAS with Built-in Blu-ray Rewriter has four SATA drive bays supporting up to 4TB storage capacity. The NAS comes with a Marvell 88F5281 500MHz processor.

The LG N4B1N supports multiple RAID 0, 1, 5, 1+0 and JBOD volumes, and an on-board LCD screen on the top gives you timely status information of the NAS. A memory card reader on the front panel supports SD, MMC, MS and xD cards for ultra-versatility.

It can be expanded by attaching extra drives to the three USB 2.0 ports. Or, plugging in a printer and share it across the network. An on-board eSATA interface provides data transfer speed of up to 3Gb/s.

• It uses Linux Kernel 2.6 with Samba.
• NAS (Network Attached Storage).

Features

• Built-in Blu-Ray ReWriter for additional data backup option & protection
• Hot Swappable and Lockable Trays
• LCD Display shows important information and alerts
• Built-in Memory Card Reader (SD, MMC, MS, xD)
• Remote Access/Multiple User Access
• Network Print Server Support
• Built-in FTP Server Functionality
• Active Directory Support
• Various User Management with Security (Users, Group, Folder)
• Auto Sync. Back Up Support
• iTunes Music Server Support
• One Touch USB/Memory Copy & Synchronized Backup
• Journaled File System
• Quiet Device Operation
• Low Power Consumption
• RoHS Compliant

Usage

SD / USB / Memory Card Access

Use the web admin interface and select the "Mobile Device" menu. Under the Mobile Device menu select the option "USB/Memory Card." An interface will open that looks like an orthodox file manager. Navigate your NAS storage drives and shared folders in the left pane, and your Memory Card or USB stick in the right pane. You can copy files directly back and forth.

Upgrading / Adding Drives

The User Manual notes, "Hard disks of size 250GB/500GB/1TB are recommended, all of which should be the same size and of the same company. If the disk sizes differ, the RAID configuration will use the smallest disk as a reference to measure all disk sizes,therefore the remainder can not be utilized and durability decreases."

Supported Drive Type

• 3.5inch SATAII HDD

Specifications

• Recommend Capacity: 250GB, 500GB, 700GB, 1.0TB
• Interface: SATA II (SATA 3Gb/s)
• RPM: 7200
• Buffer: 8MB / 16MB
• Size: 88.9 mm

Support

The LG NAS N4B1N on Newegg.com (discontinued/out of stock). (note: we do not recommend newegg.com)

LG Product Support for N4B1N. The product information and support is not available on the LG United States site, but is available in the LG Canada English site. This product may not have been intended for the U.S. market, however, Newegg.com sold it to U.S. customers. The LG N4B2N and N4B2ND4 are the U.S. products similar to the N4B1N. See this: m.lg.com PRODUCTS > Computer Products > Digital Storage > LG N4B1N with product specifications and support info.

By Phone, Call an LG support representative 1.888.542.2623

recovering deleted files and folders

The massive 26.9 MB 157 page PDF user guide has next to no information on how to recover accidentally deleted files and folders. For this reason, LG gets low marks on documentation.

On page 82 of the user guide (Product Manual) there is a breakdown of the LG NAS Share Management web interface for folders. Item number 7 mentions a "trash box" in passing. "Create a trash box within the folder. When deleting data while the trash box is active, all the deleted files will go to ‘trash box’ folder within the shared folder." And that is all that is written on the subject of undelete / data recovery of files and folders in the entire user guide.

Fortunately, the option to have a trashbox is enabled by default for shares you create. The trashbox is like the Windows recycling bin, but is not directly compatible with the Windows recycling bin.

What is interesting is that the user guide refers to it is the "trash box" and on the actual NAS file system it is called "trashbox," yet in the web interface it is labeled "Recycle Bin."

Any time you delete a file or folder (while at the keyboard of a windows machine) from a share on the NAS device, the files and/or folders are moved into the trashbox folder on the root of the share.

For example, if you have a share named "media" on your NAS, and the NAS netbios name is "server1" then your deleted files and folders are being preserved in \\server1\media\trashbox .

Therefore, if you delete a subfolder called "horror" under the folder "movies" on the share "media" on "server1" (or \\server1\media\movies\horror) then you would find the now absent horror folder actually still alive and well, sitting in the trashbox (or \\server1\media\trashbox) and you could recover it simply by moving it from the trashbox back to its original path, or any path you like for that matter. The deleted folder "horror" and any files within will NOT appear in the Windows recycling bin. The LG NAS uses its own independent version of the recycling bin called trashbox, and recovery is a conventional file copy/move operation.

Pros of the trash box: Prevention of data loss due to the accidental deletion of files and folders. Works independent of the Windows recycle bin to prevent issues related to multiple connected clients, and compatibility.

Cons of the trash box: Causes greater consumption of storage capacity, however, this can easily be negated by manually clearing items from the trashbox folder as desired. Leave it there until you are sure you want it gone, just like users do in relation to emptying the Windows recycling bin.

Tip: When creating new shares on the LG NAS it is highly recommended that you "Enable" the trash box "Recycle Bin" or ensure it is enabled, from within the web administration interface.

Q: How long are files and folders retained in the "trash box" before being purged by the NAS system?

A: This is not stated in the documentation nor in the LG online FAQ. It does appear they get purged by the system, however it is not known how often or under what conditional defined parameters.

Cannot Delete File From NAS Share in Windows

Windows file explorer shows a file on the NAS share with an invalid character in the filename and Windows cannot delete or rename the file. Attempting to delete or rename the file from windows xp reports an error, "Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or disk" and when attempting to delete or rename the file from dos command shell reports, "The system cannot find the path specified."

Example: Somehow, a file was created with a : (colon) in the filename, such as

Budget:Report.xls

The colon causes the file to fail on all Windows file command manipulation. Microsoft Windows has a strange behavior in allowing filenames on NTFS yet, the Operating System is intolerant. To remove the file, a connected Linux based system could be used, or this can be done by enabling FTP on the NAS server and accessing the file system via ftp protocol.

Solution: Go to NAS web interface and enable FTP on the share where the corrupt file exists. From the Windows system go to the DOS command shell (Start, Run, type 'cmd' and press Enter). Use the ftp command.

 ftp 192.168.1.1

Replace the IP address with your NAS server IP or netbios name. In an example where the file Budget:Report.xls is in a folder called deleteme, issue the command 'mdelete deleteme' to rid the file from the folder. The folder remains but the file is gone.

Upgrading Firmware

Source: Keltana / Newegg.com --- get the newest firmware from the german site v.4241. It provides a bit of added functionality over the the firmware included on the disk.

Shove one drive in and let it configure that (no raid). Then update the firmware. After several reboots, when you have control again, delete the volume it created, shove in the rest of your disks and create the raid you want.

German LG site (the NAS menus are still in english): http://www.lge.com/de/support/product/support-product-profile.jsp?customerModelCode=N4B1N&initialTab=drivers

Updating the firmware to the latest (Google N4B1 firmware 3967) is a must. This takes care of a few of the problems brought up in other reviews.

When upgraded to firmware 3967 it has extra options like time machine support and other fixes. You need to google N4B1 firmware 3967. Down load it from german LG site Its pretty nice. UPGRADE TO FIRMWARE 3967. NOW !!! if you want a nice machine. Do not expect any support from LG on this product. They couldn't find the side of a barn. They found any way to not give any support. If they want to compete in this segment they need to get there act together.

Drives Larger than 1TB

According to LG Support, drives above 1TB are not supported. However, users report success using 2TB drives.

Source: MVU / Newegg.com --- installed 4x2TB (5.37TB in RAID 5), the unit detected and used the drives without problems. the manual shows 1TB as the largest drive size.

NFS Support

Source: Newegg.com review --- NFS support, and after finding the German support site (search for 'n4b1 firmware' and look for lge.com/de/support in the url), I see that the 4241 update provides that! German firmware that provides DLNA and NFS.

this is not a US based unit so don't expect support on the US lg site, you can get english support on the German site.

Web Administration Interface: No space left on device (28)

After entering your username and password into the web administration interface you see the following error and cannot use the interface:

Warning: session_write_close() [function.session-write-close]: write failed: No space left on device (28) in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/en/php/login_set_prms.php on line 220

Warning: session_write_close() [function.session-write-close]: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct (/tmp/session) in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/en/php/login_set_prms.php on line 220

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /usr/local/apache/htdocs/en/php/login_set_prms.php:220) in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/en/php/login_set_prms.php on line 222

The internal storage for the unit seems to have filled up, perhaps from log files, or simply the internal storage has become faulty.

Update: The internal storage, which is solid state, has suffered from progressive failure. This is a hardware problem and has no known resolution beyond replacement.

Resolution: unknown Start backing up your data immediately.

Recovering Data from RAID 1 Drives when LG NAS has failed and the drives are Good

NOTE: Verified successful complete data recovery using a Linux system, and mdadm. LG used a standard linux RAID configuration on this NAS model making compatibility and recovery a breeze.

Lets first discuss the RAID 1 technology used by LG on this Linux based device. According to this Anandtech article, "The RAID implementation is the standard mirroring and there is no proprietary twist here with respect to the data duplication." This is good news meaning that you should be able to attach the mirrored pair to a system that is already running Linux in order to access the contained data.

Data Recovery Tools to try:

• Linux mdadm is not so much an independent tool but rather the Software RAID used by Linux
• UFS Explorer (Windows, Mac, Linux)
• TestDisk is OpenSource software

First looking at using mdadm

Boot to linux off of a separate disk or bootable flash media and use GParted to ensure that all the disks and partitions were being correctly recognized by the OS.

mdstat - use this command to see what kind of RAID is recognized.

See this link: https://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=8138

See the discussion page here for more details on a successful recovery.

 

NAS Operating System, Password Data, and Settings

The first user installed harddrive on the NAS, in addition to the partition created for network share, are two hidden partitions. By hidden it is meant that they are not visible by other computers on the network to which the NAS is attached. They are not visible from the NAS display. This NAS has no VGA connection option. These two hidden partitions are for the linux operating system of the NAS. One of the partitions is ext3 and contains the typical structure of a linux installation, including all the typical directories like /etc /home and so on. The other is a swap partition.

If you are locked out of your LG NAS you can explore the option of removing the drives and installing them in another Linux computer to recover data or unlock your account by modification of the /etc/passwd and shadow files.

Explore the file system of the NAS via another system.

• /dev/md0 on /mnt/lg1 type ext3 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)

drwxr-xr-x 16 root root 4.0K Jan 20  2010 ./
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4.0K Feb 23 12:23 ../
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4.0K Jan 20  2010 bin/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4.0K Jan 20  2010 boot/
drwxr-xr-x  8 root root  12K Mar  6  2000 dev/
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 4.0K Feb 24 12:09 etc/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4.0K Mar  7  2008 home/
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4.0K Jan 20  2010 lib/
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   11 Jan 20  2010 linuxrc -> bin/busybox*
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root 4.0K Mar  6  2000 mnt/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4.0K Jan 30  2006 proc/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4.0K Jan 30  2006 root/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4.0K Jan 20  2010 sbin/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4.0K Mar  7  2008 sys/
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root 4.0K Mar  6  2000 tmp/
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4.0K Jan 20  2010 usr/
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4.0K Jan 20  2010 var/

What file contains the network settings for the device, if those are actually stored on the first drive and not on some kind of flash memory within the mainboard? Searching for network IP addresses with rgrep we only found

/etc/sss_script/diag/diag_asm.ini:   TEST_IP         192.168.1.200
/etc/sss_script/diag/diag_asm.ini:   HOST_IP         192.168.1.100 

It is believed that the actual IP address settings for the NIC must be stored on a SSD / EPROM on the main board.