Zyxel NSA-210 successfully running 4TB Seagate 4000DM000

This walkthrough will tell You how to make Your >2TB work in Zyxel NSA-210 with newest firmware when disk initialization fails. It does not contain images currently, maybe later. Maybe hard to understand and not enough detailed. I wrote it after I succedded and it was hard to remember all correct steps after 2 days of continous work on this issue. Also I consider that You have a bit of Linux knowledge that's why I skipped details here and there. Feel free to ask questions in comments.

Make Zyxel NSA-210 support Your 4TB HDD.

What will You need:

- Linux x64 (required, I used CentOS, can be in VirtualBox),

- USB->SATA bridge or desktop computer (required)

- Additional tools listed in this walkthrough if You don't have full installation of Linux (required)

- Patience (optional :)

- Clonezilla or other able to read EXT3 and XFS (optional)

- >2TB HD (optional, that is if You have one)

- <2TB HD (required, can be old HD that You kept in NAS)

First You may like to boot up Your NAS with old disk and check if everything works. If You didn't boot it up ever, then You need to do it with HD that is less than 2TB, even old 40GB SATA will do, we just need to initialize it with tools that were shipped with the NAS (or newer ones available on Zyxel site to download. WARNING! MUST BE FOR NSA-210, even if program is the same, newest versions for other models will just not work correctly, even if it appears so).

So init the old HD in NAS with newest firmware so it boots up, You can start setting it up but it's recommended not to make any shares and users yet, let it have admin only (root for shares). You should use as little space HD as possible because clonning it (if You decide to do so) will take a while. If You didn't put 4.41 version of firmware during disk inition (in disk init wizard) then download it now from Zyxel site and update the firmware with web interface. It's important to have newest one due to 4TB disk support, even though You may have trouble making it work at all.

Turn off NAS and take out old HD, use USB->SATA bridge or 2.5 inch USB case (in case You used this size to init Your Zyxel - yes it's possible to put in 2.5 inch HD, it just needs SATA sockets), or connect it inside Your desktop if You have one.

Now the things can get tricky. But You will need linux anyway, clonezilla itself will MOST LIKELY NOT help You, even though it may appear that Your NAS read it.

Easiest way to move firmware data is to just clone old HD onto new HD either using device->device setup with clonezilla or device->image then image->device setup. It's recommended to copy whole harddrive. WARNING! MAKE SURE TO UNCHECK PARTITION RESIZING!!! If You fail in any of steps after this You need to start over doing this.

Alternative way is to make Linux read Your partitions and copy the data on old HD to Your home directory. WARNING! BOTH PARTITIONS MUST BE COPPIED IN SEPARATE DIRECTORIES AND ALL HIDDEN FILES, AND FILE PERMISSIONS MUST BE PRESERVED (all, even when groups/users IDs don't exists on Your linux box/virtualbox).

Access Your old HD and new HD with Linux x64 box or virtual guest machine. In case of using USB->SATA adapters and VirtualBox make sure You don't use USB 3.0 connection, it will fail to read the drive even when 1.1 mode is set in VB - just use 2.0 cable or connect to USB 2.0/ USB 2.0 hub. You need to run terminal as root then type: fdisk -l and using Your sharp eyes and brain to distinguish between disk names like /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc etc. Now if You already know which one is Your old HD then note down starting and ending point of first partition and starting point of 2nd partition. If You used clonezilla You most likely have same structure on Your new HD. You may already know what I want You to do but STOP, DON'T CREATE ANY PARTITIONS ON NEW HD (or alter them when cloned).

We now need gdisk or parted, because we need to make MBR into GPT partition table on new HD - Yes new firmware reads it all right. Both solutions are valid but I prefer parted myself more, even though it's most likely harder to use but at the same time I know what I'm doing because all things are done manually. Doesn't matter if You cloned Your HD or are starting on fresh HD, Your data will be intact if You DON'T do any mistake here because basically what we are editing is main partition table and XFS file system can be resized pretty nicely.

So now run parted on Your new HD. For example parted /dev/sdc (if sdc is Your new HD THAT IS!). Type in print and confirm that You have cloned partitions or empty table. Now type in mklable gpt. If You had cloned HDs it will give warning information, answer Yes. Now we need to switch to sectors as the measuring unit, type in unit s. Now check Your noted start and end sectors from original disk back when You used fdisk. For me they were: partition 1 - Start: 63, End: 1028159, partition 2 - Start: 1028160, End: not important. Now I would type mkpart primary ext3 63 1028159. Ignore the warning. Now type print and confirm that start and end sector matches Your previously noted range. Also take a look at reported number of sectors by the disk. This is kind of importand because You can't go over that range when creating second partition for data, in fact, You must stay away a bit from the end due to one sector being used for GPT partition table backup and it doesn't exactly means it's the last. Let's make 2nd partition, I typed mkpart primary xfs 1028160 7814033472, and again ignore the warning. I got away by like 2000 or 20000 sectors away, don't remember, but it's not that important if it's that away from the end of HD. You can also name both partiton, first should be named firmware, second is second. Not sure if it's necessary, but I did that just incase.

quit parted.

If You cloned image then You can skip this place. If You didn't then You now need to make ext3 file system on first partition and xfs on 2nd partition. You can search the internet on how to do that. No special settings need to be used here, just make sure they are the same size as place alligned for partition. After making file systems You need to copy all previously backed up data from old HD to new HD or directly copy if You have both HDs connected. WARNING! ALL HIDDEN FILES, AND FILE PERMISSIONS MUST BE PRESERVED. WARNING2! Be sure that Your XFS partition has disabled lazy-count, mount the XFS partition and run xfs_info on the mountpoint. If it has enabled lazy-count then You must umount it and run command that looked like this in my example: xfs_admin -c 0 /dev/md127. I have suspision that if You don't disable it You may run into the same problem as me, disk full messages after writing ~100GB to the HD.

This step is for people that used clonezilla previously. Now You need to mount XFS file system. You need to add -t xfs in the line since system may not detect it automatically. Now let's resize it by typing: xfs_growfs mount_point. It may take a while in case of big HD so go make Yourself a cup of tea or coffee. :)

After this confirm that all files are still visible on both partitions and umount them.

Now You basically should be ready to put Your new HD into Zyxel? Go on and try it... You will be susrpised that all this work is NOT YET ENOUGH! Why? Well You may have noticed something when running fdisk -l on old HD. There is some additional information under old disk. Yes, that's right. A RAID-Linear volume. Why the hell would the use RAID in one HD Zyxel? No idea, but I think it's to avoid errors when booting with USB drive connected, or to show more volumes if there are any (most likely it's possible), because Zyxel doesn't look for sdXY when booting, it searches for MD0 only for data storage.

How the heck then we make RAID stuff. Especially that we just made partitions and checked that data is intact. Well, it won't hurt Your already existing partitions if You do everything RAID, I mean right. :)

First we would like to read all RAID stuff on old HD, by typing mdadm --detail /dev/mdX where X is the thing that fdisk -l reported for old HD. For example my output looked like this:

[root@localhost media]# mdadm --detail /dev/md127

/dev/md127:

        Version : 0.90

  Creation Time : Tue Apr 22 18:36:51 2014

     Raid Level : linear

     Array Size : 155774208 (148.56 GiB 159.51 GB)

   Raid Devices : 1

  Total Devices : 1

Preferred Minor : 127

    Persistence : Superblock is persistent

    Update Time : Thu Apr 24 11:50:17 2014

          State : clean 

 Active Devices : 1

Working Devices : 1

 Failed Devices : 0

  Spare Devices : 0

       Rounding : 64K

           UUID : 8296b7ff:c19f6ddc:7c88728c:d0f54ce9

         Events : 0.29

    Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State

       0       8       18        0      active sync   /dev/sdb2

So we now need to create similar thing for new HD, having in mind that most of the info must match and we need to use MDx that is not yet used. For this I ran this command: 

mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=linear --raid-devices=1 --rounding=64K /dev/sdc2 --metadata=0.9 --force

It may be important to use 0.9 version metadata otherwise Zyxel may fail to see the volume. After running this command You are basically ready to put Your new HD into Zyxel. What is left is to loosly compare permissions being the same as the old HD ones by looking at few files/directories on both drives. ls -la will as well tell You if new HD consist of hidden directories/files and symlinks.

After this You may try to put Your HD into Zyxel NSA-210 and You should see volume of 3.64TB or similar size in case of 4TB drive. That is Your new data storage. If for some reason Zyxel appears unstable, like adding shares doesn't work or it can't shutdown, then reconnect it to Your linux box and run xfs_check or xfs_repair. Also I noticed that I needed to reboot NAS after adding a share, even though it already existed when I rechecked with my Linux box. So bigger HD may still have some problems with this old device, but it's yet up to test... Finally my 4TB Seagate 4000DM000 has nesting place to rest in. :)

So basically what we done was:

1. Created GPT on new HD (instead of MBR table as on old one),

2. Restored parition structure on new HD,

3. Resized data partition to cover whole free disk area,

4. Coppied all data from old HD to new HD including hidden files and permissions (or cloned it with clonezilla),

5. Recreated valid RAID-linear array for second partition,

6. Confirmed everything is ready to boot and run on Zyxel NSA-210.

I hope I helped. :)

~~~~

Mr_KrzYch00 ( http://www.4my.eu )

Firefox power user friendly? Not anymore.

Developers that make Firefox less power user friendly.

As You may already know some devs at mozilla are doing whatever they can to strip Firefox from options and other nice features. Basically by referring to some guy's page that complains to himself [a monoloque]: http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill , they took away very nice options people used to browse the internet having turned ON or OFF. Of course it's easier to take something away than to implement some informative stuff telling user what he just did or how to make his browser "usable" again. By "usable" I mean the way Alex sees it. He claims that: "Firefox is very customizable! In fact, it’s so customizable that we allow you to make the browser unusable with a single click." and that IS almost true, except if You go so detailed about stuff You should really care about saying truth to people, oh right I forgot, that was directed to himself I guess. You can't turn off that bar with a single click You need to go to menu first to do it so it requires a bit more clicks. You at least need to access correct menu by clicking on it, then submenu, then pick a bar to be disabled, and most likely You would need to repeat such procedure.

Basically he says that by Your son's clicking You can be left with browser having only title bar, well, true is that it can really take You some time to figure it out how to get Your menu bar back to enable all the things there (I myself got caught on that in Media Player Classic, but after pressing ESC it all went to normall), but what do we have help for? You just simply check help and You will find Your answer that You need to just press ALT button once to access titile bar and enable all features back or more times if You pick wrong bar at first ;). A lot of people that use computer for long time already know what single clicking left ALT button does and that a lot of programs always allowed disabling or enabling bars. But fortunatelly this feature was not taken away in Nightly (Firefox Alpha build) that is still normal looking (or Holly builds)... yet.

Basically what was taken away (or moved somewhere else if You will) is the ability to control how the browser should render webpages. Even though it was not much to be turned off but it really could make sites hard to browse. At the same time I noticed sites informing user how to bring all the features back if he did disable them by mistake, even with full walkthrough. Same thing could be done at Mozilla devs side, to inform user that browser can render webpage unusable due to certain functions being disabled with a small bar at the top of page, not the huge dialog box look alike that shows for example when "plugin wants to get installed so I should care and press allow, because it's so huge it must mean I should really see it repeating over and over on webpage wanting to install it on its every subpage, I'm so liking it etc". I'm sorry it's too hard to implement, I'm sorry to be voicing myself here, I should really just shut up and let You make browser that doesn't support plugins and everything being hardcoded, even sites You SHOULD browse to not let user DO TOO MUCH /sarcasm.

So why mozilla devs made such changes? What could be the reason? Well first let's read a bit about Alex on the bottom of his elaboration:

"Alex Limi is VP of Product Design at Highfive , a company that is transforming the way you work. Previously head of Firefox UX & Product Design Strategy at Mozilla , designer at Google & co-founder of Plone ."

So he was previously A HEAD OF Firefox UX & Product Design Strategy at Mozilla! We can now easly suspect that he either:

- had a BIG VOICE (seems a lot bigger than people on earth since his "word" made mozilla devs not listen to anyone else and just went for it, taking away customizations. Slowly, one by one.),

- he promised Mozilla devs something in exchange for making "his" Highfive not be easly "breakable" by users.

This is only assumption, since nobody really knows what is the real reason, but thing should be noted that after this they started to appear VERY NOT FRIENDLY with all the saying: "such discussion should be moved to forums" or "this decision is final". WOW! How far it can go? Maybe they will implement something in Firefox to automatically uninstall it and prevent installing the browser again on computers of complainers with a single hit of a button at their Headquarters? Maybe...

I didn't want to sound so agitated but I really am. What agitates me is not the fact that Alex made his elaboration. He has very huge right to do so, as every journalist does. But the thing that Mozilla devs "listened" to him SO EASLY and IGNORED everyone else. It just looks like they are doing browser for themselfes only.

That's all I have to say (write).
~~~~

Mr_KrzYch00

GPTchat accepting site support

As You may know GPTchat is FREE service that also allows to get FREE software to speed up Your surfing called Firemouse. The money to keep it fun and alive is spent from my own pocket, that's why I decided to let other people contribute as well by allowing to support site through Paypal.

The money will be used for server costs, development and to keep the site fun. I plan to use 75% of amount sent by supporters for prizes to members.

LIST OF SUPPORTERS:
 - Frederic Prophete sent $10, Thank You!  
 - PEANUTDUDES.COM sent $5, Thank You!
  - Thara Rohan sent $5, Thank You!
  - David Hansen sent $5, Thank You!
  - Elina Balashova sent $5, Thank You!
 - Kathy Powell sent $1, Thank You!

  - and everyone else that used on-site redeemption to increase prizes pool.

There are 4 types of support:
- Micro Support
- Mini Support
- Standard Support
- Maxi Support

Each supporter will be able to receive reward when contacting me with same e-mail the support was provided from. The rewards are as follows:
Micro Support ($1): 2,000 hits to Your site in GPTchat PTP and 3 days of site being displayed in GPTchat Manual Surf (every 2 hour or more to same member, 5 seconds timer)*.
Mini Support ($2): 5,000 hits to Your site in GPTchat PTP and 7 days of site being displayed in GPTchat Manual Surf (every 1 hour or more to same member, 5 seconds timer)*.
Normal Support ($5): 30,000 hits to Your site in GPTchat PTP and 21 days of site being displayed in GPTchat Manual Surf (every 1 hour or more to same member, 5 or 10 seconds timer)* + access to Firemouse without doing a task of 1000 sites surfed and 1000 PTP2 valid hits on GPTchat + NEW! One lifetime GPTchat PTP2 filler campaign**.
Maxi Support ($10): 100,000 hits to Your site in GPTchat PTP and 2 months of site being displayed in GPTchat Manual Surf (every 30 minutes or more to same member, 5, 10 or 15 seconds timer)* + access to Firemouse without doing a task of 1000 sites surfed and 1000 PTP2 valid hits on GPTchat + NEW! Two lifetime GPTchat PTP2 filler campaigns**.

Our PTP system is unique because Your site can be HIT UNIQUE! This means if You wish You can ask for special setting for Your site to not be revisited by same person/IP for certain time period (up to 24h/IP) - good for splash pages that award credits only once/24h/IP.

* - members can decide whether they want 200% PTP hits (meaning 4,000 , 10,000 , 60,000 or 200,000 - depends on mode of support) without manual surf reward or the normal reward but with an exception of externally tracking Manual Surf hits through link provided.

** - filler campaign occurs when the member viewing GPTchat PTP2 page already saw all unique sites in rotator and the system has nothing to show him anymore, then it picks random site from database of filler sites. Unfortunatelly at this time these are hardcoded and not trackable, no ability to stop, pause or set unique delay hit for. But You are sure that they will be viewed once every some time. :)

The button can be found in the upper right corner on GPTchat. Remember to use contact form after supporting the site. Please don't panic if it takes a while for me to review Your mail, I'm not available 24h/day ;) . Also not all ads will be approved. Please check FAQ on GPTchat page to make sure Your site will be approved, otherwise You may be forced to change reward site.
Each supporter will receive unique address to track their ADs in number of hits left, PTP and MS hits received (separate).

Of course I'm open to other suggestions to suit Your needs if possible, for this please use contact form first. :)

Thanks for Your continued support,
~~~~~~~~
Mr_KrzYch00

Touhou 2: Story of Eastern Wonderland tune beeing similar to FF6 - The Decisive Battle?

According to some people on Youtube Touhou 2: Story of Easter Wonderland tune called "Himorogi, Burn in Violet" is being similar to Final Fantasy VI tune "The Decisive Battle" as seen on examples below: 

 Himorogi, The Decisive Battle (AKA FF6 & Touhou 2 mix)

 Touhou 02 & FF6 music coincidence?

 

Is that really the case? Decide for Yourself, as I have a little bonus for You in a form of MIDI file of "Himorogi, Burn in Violet" that sounds EXACTLY as the one ingame when You select MIDI music after properly configuring MIDI Output. Enjoy! :)

Himorogi, Burn in Violet MIDI download

KrzY CGminer Idle Detector v1.03 by Mr_KrzYch00

 Version 1.03 of KrzYcgmineridledetector is out.
Changes:
- Added INI file - settings are saved everytime You change anything and restored on start,
- Added ability to change a port of miner to connect to, range 4025-4030,
- Added ability to change intensity to set GPU to when computer is idle, range 1-20,
- CHANGE: Program is now communicating directly with miner, no need for external java API (thanks to AHKsock library).

Well for all of You that CAN change intensity while using computer I wrote a small scripts in Autohotkey that I compiled to EXE. This one checks how long Your computer was idle (You set the number of seconds to count down) and if it considers it Idle, changes Intensity to 9  predefined value of 1-20 or enables GPU of certain ID. When You start moving Your mouse or typing on keyboard it changes Intensity back to dynamic or disables GPU of certain ID. Also good for miners with 5 graphic cards that still use the miner for normal work and don't want to manually set intensity when they for example go to make coffee. The program will take care of increasing GPU work for that time for extra shares. :)

(compatible with bfgminer and all other forks with similar API)

If You want some feature, feel free to comment here and request it. I will see if it can be implemented.
http://4my.eu/KrzYcgmineridledetector.zip

~~~~
Mr_KrzYch00 - www.4my.eu

BitCoin mining on Notebook? Yes!

A lot of notebooks have mobile graphic cards with poor computation power... Though it's different case with Sony VAIO VPCSA25. This notebook breaks easly: fan, bad pixels, SSD boards. It has very outdated drivers now since Sony doesn't care and it costed a lot. I know I'm complaining but it really is WORST CUSTOMER CARE and BAD ASSEMBLING I ever saw. Next time I will stick to Asus as I thought I should, but.....

This notebook has awesome AMD Radeon HD6630M for computation! Most notebooks nowadays come with Nvidia that sucks for Hash computations. It's just slower becasue it's having less more advanced transistors that are great for games, but because of them being in less number, worse for simple computations done on GPU.

You can still get notebook with AMD graphic card, but they are mostly low-end having some shitty 10MH/s etc etc.

This small 13.3" notebook's AMD Radeon HD6630M can do whipping 66MH/s! Hey! For notebook it's awesome speed... it's 5,5x less than HD6870 for desktops that gets 290-306MH/s (max number ahieved when overclocked 900->990Mhz and dedicated - otherwise it crashes). Due to Sony having outdated drivers and not caring to update without ability to switch to original AMD ones (as You can do in most cases with Asus) it doesn't like that You want to use computer at the same time. Well You can, but setting instensity to anything below 8 will crash Your display driver that will require You to restart cgminer... Not to mention graphic card overheats when playing a game or mining and crashes as well... Good stuff, let's put some great HD6630M (+7% better than Nvidia 330M, but most likely getting more temperatures to compete due to having more transistors, and yes, it does) into small 13.3" and not care about the resuls - Sony. But there is a workaround for it: 

Watch movie how 6630M performs

This building is quite unstable but it makes it -15*C than being put under notebook when it's being fixed on empty cigarette packs. :D

Well for all of You that CAN change intensity while using computer I wrote a small scripts in Autohotkey that I compiled to EXE. This one checks how long Your computer was idle (You set the number of seconds to count down) and if it considers it Idle, changes Intensity to 9 or enables GPU of certain ID. When You start moving Your mouse or typing on keyboard it changes Intensity back to dynamic or disables GPU of certain ID. Also good for miners with 5 graphic cards that still use the miner for normal work and don't want to manually set intensity when they for example go making coffee. The program will take care of increasing GPU work for that time for extra shares. :)

If You want some feature, feel free to comment here and request it. I will see if it can be implemented.

http://4my.eu/KrzYcgmineridledetector.zip

~~~~
Mr_KrzYch00 - www.4my.eu

GPTchat - a new way to earn and advertise online

Hi,

I'm currently running a GPT program. The tool You can promote Your advertising as well as earn online with. It's called GPTchat.

I'm the person who wrote it from scratch basing on my programming knowledge as well as from examples found on the internet (who doesn't do it like this nowadays :P ). Yes, this makes me a developer, owner and administrator at the same time. So if the problem appears it is up to me to fix it, not to wait for "new version" of software to come out. Don't ask to buy it, it's not for sale :) .

Anyway the point is, if You are familiar with all PTC, manual surf, paid to promote programs You should check it out. It's very similar to all others. You can set up banners, page in its paid to promote or page in manual surf to be advertised there, as well as to win random prizes by promoting paid to promote page and surfing there. I think it's enough of small presenation. Please follow this link: http://www.4my.eu and read more there.

If You are already a member You can post Your comments here. I really appreciate it :)

Thank You for Your time.

Sincerely,

Mr_KrzYch00