Having problems setting up N4100S

[ido]

I bought a new Thecus N4100S which came well packaged and protected from rough handling. I bought 4 seagate barracuda 7200.10 -- 750GB drives which are supposed to work with this NAS according to the Hard Disk Compatibility List. I removed the 1.5GBps jumper to allow them to work at 3GBps. These drives come with Spread Spectrum Clocking already factory disabled. When I turn on the NAS the drives show no problems. The NAS has a power LED on, the LAN 1 LED on and each hard drive shows HDD Power LED (blue) and Access/Error LED blinks once for each successive drive at boot up. The Busy LED on the front of the NAS then turns on and blinks orange. I can not go any further with the setup to upgrade the firmware to 1.3.04 (believe the current is 1.1C) since I can not access the NAS to pull an IP from it. When I reinstall the 1.5GBs jumpers on the drives nothing changes.

If I try to ping the default IP of LAN 1 (192.168.1.100) I get 4 packets sent and all 4 dropped producing error 65 (whatever that is supposed to mean). The Thecus Setup Wizard v1.1.4 polls the NAS as shown by the progress bar but finds no drives which leaves all options on the left side of the dialogue box greyed out and unaccessable. I tried using LAN 2 (192.168.2.100) but exactly the same response (or lack of). I then tried pulling the 4 barracuda drives and put in a single SATA drive (Maxtor DiamondMax 9 -- 6Y160M0 --1.5GB/s) which is also on the Compatibility List as being useable in this NAS. With only this single drive in the NAS it boots exactly the same way and ends up at the flashing orange Busy LED again. Again I can not pull and IP from the NAS by pinging it.

The Thecus Monitor program also does not find any drives and after using the default 'admin' ID and PW to login I am left again at a greyed out screen with no access to any option. When I try to WebBase access the NAS with IE 7.0 I get an error saying the NAS IP cannot be found.

Can anyone suggest something to help me get this NAS setup and firmware upgraded?? I am running out of ideas. Thanks for any help you can provide.

[rookie]

Hi Ido,

Did you already try to boot the NAS without any disks in it? Maybe that way you can get to the webinterface and do a firmware update and hopefully after that your drives will show.

(P.s.:I'm a N2100 and N5200 owner, so don't now exactly about N4100)

[N2100Owner]

Download whatever latest firmware from Thecus for your model.
Reset N4100S back to factory default.
The IP will become 192.168.1.100.
Set your PC to 192.168.1.1.
Use a network cable included and connect your PC to N4100.
Ping 192.168.1.100 from your PC and see if there is any result.
If Yes, then start your browser and go to 192.168.1.100.
Upload firmware from your web UI.

[ido]

Hi Guys: Thanks for the replies to my post.

rookie: Yes, I tried to boot the NAS without any drives but again I only get to the flashing orange access light and never reach the audible beep which is supposed to indicate complete bootup. I am sure this is why I can't pull an IP from the NAS or access it through Angry IP Scanner, web configuration page or the setup wizard.

N2100owner: I downloaded firmware V1.3.04 which is the latest for the N4100. With no network cable attached and no drives in the NAS I held the reset button for 10 seconds at power up to reset the default LAN 1 address 192.168.1.100 and default password 'admin'. I used a network cable to connect directly from the PC to the N4100 LAN 1 port. From a DOS screen using ipconfig showing the correct information for the NAS I tried to ping its address. The 4 packets are dropped and an error 65 is indicated with the timeout. Thecus Tech Support has told me the NAS cannot be accessed until it completes its bootup with an audible beep. Just don't know how to get it to do that!!!!!

[ido]

I notice there is a jumper block called JP1 on the mainboard. The jumper on my N4100 is across pins 1 and 3. Does anyone know what the various settings for this jumper block are?? Can anyone confirm that pins 1 & 3 should be jumpered??