We had a customer come into our software dev shop with a non-functional Netgear 4200 which they wanted us to pull their information from. Long story short it was a loose cable inside the case and after managing to pull their data off we asked them what they wanted to do with the unit.
Whatever you like they said having already replaced it.
The problem with the 4200 is that:
1. It's running a very old version of Netgear's RAIDiator OS which is seriously yucko
2. It only supports a max disk size of 2TB (considering it cost £5k circa 2011 this is a little disappointing)
3. Erm, sure there's more but after staring aghast at the kludgy web interface for managing the NAS we thought the status quo simply wouldn't do
Which is all a damn shame since the NAS is real purty and the build quality puts our real Synology RS2212+ boxes to shame:
Peeking inside shows a (custom?) Supermicro X7SB3 with 14 SATA ports (more on that later).
First step was to remove this little widget:
To install DSM onto a new USB we needed the following software:
1. NanoBoot-5.0.3.1-fat.img
2. Win32DiskImager-0.9.5-binary.zip
3. DSM_DS3612xs_4493.pat (Full unmodified version from Synology's site)
I won't bother reiterating the install steps, it's pretty standard stuff, nothing different.
The only tweak I had to make was to the synoinfo.conf file to ensure that DSM knows there are 14 ports on the motherboard since ports 1-6 are on the ICH9 controller with ports 7-14 on the LSI 1068E controller:
source: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1361&start=230#p9849
/etc/synoinfo.conf
change:
esataportcfg="0xff000"
to:
esataportcfg="0x00000"
change (12):
internalportcfg="0xfff"
to (14):
internalportcfg="0x3fff"
Do the same to /etc.defaults/synoinfo.conf
And you're done!
Guessing those Netgear 3200 and 4200 boxes I see on ebay from time to time going for £300 odd are going to get a little more expensive now...