Aetherone

HA! After a whole lot of fiddling I got the right combination of files to flash my Phison drives to F400. Turns out the various packages on usbdev.ru are incomplete - I needed "Phison_MPALL_v5.13.0C.rar" for an operational flashtool AND "firmware_ps2251-03.rar" for the correct firmware files to flash my units. Thanks to @Xeondile for the correct settings once this lot was cobbled together. BEFORE AFTER The settings once the firmware BIN was loaded into the folder. As above, some caution would be advised - a small number of online virus checkers flag these as potentially hostile but none of them can agree on exactly what the malware is so I'm not convinced it's a false positive given what these programs are designed to do. Still, be careful & use them offline, preferably from a disposable temporary Windows install.

HA! After a whole lot of fiddling I got the right combination of files to flash my Phison drives to F400. Turns out the various packages on usbdev.ru are incomplete - I needed "Phison_MPALL_v5.13.0C.rar" for an operational flashtool AND "firmware_ps2251-03.rar" for the correct firmware files to flash my units. Thanks to @Xeondile for the correct settings once this lot was cobbled together. BEFORE AFTER Some caution would be advised - a small number of online virus checkers flag these as potentially hostile but none of them can agree on exactly what the malware is so I'm not convinced it's a false positive given what these programs are designed to do. Still, be careful & use them offline, preferably from a disposable temporary Windows install.

Exactly what we see with the memory bug & I'm not the first to note it - although I don't think anyone has tried on DSM7 with these older CPUs. Between 1 and 4GB of ram, system behaves as expected - transfers are wire speed and the UI is nice and responsive. Applications install and perform just fine, everything is ticketyboo for weeks, if not months - and with my tame application requirements, I fully expect a NAS to operate seamlessly for multiple months on end. The only reason for a reboot is a power outage longer than the UPS can sustain or a firmware upgrade. I'm not quite sure why my 1812 saw the issue with DSM6 on 4Gb and DSM7 doesn't. Going over the 4GB mark has some interesting side effects where the CPU is constantly maxing out with tasks that barely tickle it with <4. This is fully apparent after a fresh boot with a fresh install with nothing more than stock apps. The system is affected to the point where writing to it over the network is severely limited - what was a flatline 110MBps copy is now struggling to hold 40-50 with frequent pauses despite there now being more memory available to the system. Immediate fix is remove memory. Intel did only rate the D2700 for 4Gb of ram so perhaps there's a design flaw or a deliberate performance crippling once you exceed that amount.

Thanks. Had already been over usbdev.ru and pulled down pretty much every version they had. Most didn't recognise my device and the few that did couldn't cope with the Toshiba SLC NAND on it. After a bit of digging I spooled up a Windows XP machine which did a bit better but still failed to flash.

Update: external USB stick partitions DD imaged and restored back to the stock DOM, all buttoned up and running very nicely. While I had the lid off I tried extra ram again under DSM7 - 6GB upset it as expected, just instantly maxing a CPU core with any interaction at all. However, unlike my DSM6 experience, 4GB is running fine and dandy. System is responsive and behaves as expected - no sign at all of the CPU usage bug. Interesting. Since DSM7.1.1 supports it, I also tested SMB multichannel - which works surprisingly well with some transfers hitting over 200MBps until the tiny ancient 120Gb SSD I've been using for testing runs out of cache 🤐. Watching htop shows SMB-MC pinning the CPU pretty hard though. Well worth the effort to buy this old workhorse a few more years. 😎

There we go. I missed that note further back up the thread. Good thing it's solvable with a clean HDD installation - which is probably best practice when screwing around with a NAS at this level - don't have ANY data on it you can't afford to lose! I imagine this process is vastly more complicated if your original DOM has died. Is there any way of getting the files from a PAT or do you need a kind stranger to share their image?

Ah HA! Can't upgrade 12-13 Hackinology from DSM 6.2.4 to 7.0.1, it'll throw that "Incompatible upgrade file" error. Can FRESH install 7.1.1 once you've reset the system (or fed it new drives or whatever). So glad I've got a stash of old small SATA SSDs kicking about.

Bugger. Feeding it the "DSM_DS1813+_42218.pat" (AKA DSM v7.0.1) results in error "Incompatible upgrade file." Guess it's not fully convinced it's an 1813?

Good plan, I did that. In the end it was deceptively easy to persuade my DS1812+ it is really a DS1813+ instead. I didn't bother to downgrade, just installed a blank old SSD, did the file exchange and booted it up ... tada! DS1813+ reporting for duty! To summarise for those who follow (keeping in ind I kept mine simple - one drive; last DS1812+ OS installed; no important data to lose - even if this works, your DSM version is going to be out of date so I'd be VERY cautious about exposing this to the internet). 1. Starting with a working NAS unit, log in to the SSH console and dd if=/dev/synoboot of=/volume1/myShare/DS1812+synoboot-6.2.4u7.img I'm not sure if you need any SynoCommunity packages to get DD. They're pretty worth it for lots of useful utilities. We've started here because a backup image of your Synology is flat out a GOOD thing to have. Remember to put it somewhere safe (NOT on the NAS!) 2. boost your ram to 2 or 3gb. Single rank memory for these old units. Samsung seems to have a decent rep. 4Gb and above trigger the CPU usage bug for me so as nice as that much free ram is, it's at significant performance cost. 3. The really hard part - find a USB stick you can boot the machine from. It has to be something with an older chipset where the manufacturing tools have been leaked. USB-A or small port DOM doesn't matter, making the stick F400/F400 is the important bit. For me a Toshiba flash based DOM didn't work even with the MFG tools, but a 4Gb Lexar Jumpdrive Firefly did. Strictly, you don't need the DOM if you have a working stock flash and a backup, but I'm cautious like that. 4. Once you have the stick, flash it with the DD image you used up there. I used Rufus under Windows to do mine. 5. Open the NAS, remove the stock DOM and see if it'll boot from your DIY media. 6. Assuming it booted, you now need the DS1813+ PAT file. Since my unit was updated to 6.2.4u7, I grabbed the appropriate 1813+ version "DSM_DS1813+_25556.pat". This is where you refer back to post #35 in this thread - open "DSM_DS1813+_25556.pat" with 7zip and extract 4 files (Thanks DSfuchs for the image). Windows didn't want to play ball for me with mounting the tiny DOM partitions so I used a Linux box instead. If you're handy with the command line or "Midnight Commander" you can do this right on the NAS (if you're brave enough, on the stock DOM no less). With an abundance of caution, I made two folders in the second partition - 1812 files and 1813 files. Move the four relevant files to the 1812 folder for safekeeping and copy the 1813 files to the root of the partition. That's it, job done. Yeah, it seems too easy but it's really all there is for this. Dismount the stick, plug it into the bootable port on the NAS, slot in a blank drive and fire it up. After a couple of nervous minutes, my unit emitted a happy beep and showed up on the network as a DS1813+ (original serial number and MAC addresses to boot). With a blank drive in it, I fed the installer the "DSM_DS1813+_25556.pat" file and let it do it's thing. Network performance appears unchanged, all my usual swath of apps installed fine, no complaints anywhere I can see. It's just working 🤑 Next step I guess will be to make a new backup of the USB boot image (see step 1 above) and then see if it'll upgrade to DSM 7. After that, I guess I'll give it a few weeks to be absolutely sure and then look at cloning the USB stick back to the stock DOM and buttoning the old girl up for the next 4-5-6 years. Thanks for the advice DSfuchs!

Thanks. Wish me luck! Before I pull the copy trigger, any idea how the 1813 will deal with the missing two ethernet ports? ... or send it and see? Is there any need to downgrade from U7 first? ... or send it and see? I'm hoping that with a known good backup of the synoboot that if things don't go to plan, all I'll need to do to un-door-stop it is re-apply the flash image?

4 & 6Gb were both suffering badly with the CPU usage bug. So it's happily been running with 3 now for several weeks. Whats with 2? I put the spare 1 into it's 1513+ brother and that seems happy as a clam with 3Gb too? Yes it counted, recognised and passed memtest with 6Gb (2+4). Pity the CPU usage was nuts and the performance severely affected. Post #35 then? Just the four files seems almost too easy?

Wow, it actually works. DS1812+ booting DSM from the modified Lexar Jumpdrive 4GB, plugged into the USB2 ports on the back of the motherboard (there's no front ports on this model). I know it's booting from the jumpdrive because the stock DOM is sitting on the desk next to me 🙃 So now I humbly ask: where to? DS1812+ DSM 6.2.4-25556 U7 currently installed dd if=/dev/synoboot of=/volume1/myShare/DS1812+synoboot-6.2.4u7.img successfully captured USB stick sorted and working One drive currently, nothing important on it - can wipe and do whatever DS1813+ PATS 25556 & 42218 sitting on my local drives. Three thoughts for my afternoon Go back and start reading this post from the beginning yet again Spool up a Linux machine to make fiddling with files on the DOM easier? Get out a windows XP machine and see if the Phison DOM I have can be UID/VID modded there At this stage I'm working with the assumption the Phison DOM I have here can't be modded so I'll do all the experiments with the USB stick and when it's operational, DD it again and then write that image back to the Synology DOM and keep the USB as backup incase the Synology one dies. thanks

indeed, that's where I found them. Mighty have to order 20x of them to make international shipping 16,000km worth it 😆

Wait, an XP VM? Is the Phison software not compatible with newer operating systems? 32 or 64 bit? I might have to dig the retro box out of the shed if this is the case?!?!

I had to search ebay.de to find those numbers, not my native .com.au or the plain .com. Looks like "Intenso" is a local brand for you based on worldwide searching. Agreed, it's questionable if the product line has stuck with flashable controllers. I found a "Micro Line" variant available via China. Thinking about grabbing a small one to see if it's flashable as that form factor would work very well with the front USB ports. ChipGenius_v4_19_0319 identified my stick as a "SMI SM3252C - ISP 100425-MI-r" with Micron flash. I found "smi_mptool_v2.03.20_v4" dated 25/02/2013 was able to recognise it and reprogram it's identity. Yes the tool came from a Russian site, so antiviral cautions are well advised.