Connecting to Buffalo Linkstation HD-H250LAN

Yank the disks and stick them in a USB-C disk sled, and cable the HDDs directly. This assumes the storage is either empty, or is using RAID-1 or JBOD, not RAID-0, and portable. (And the particular drive may use a non-portable format that doesn’t allow this reuse with out erasing and reformatting.)

That box looks to be SMB1 / CIFS era, which is wildly insecure and long targeted by ransomware.

Apple discontinued SMB1 / CIFS support back in 2010, with OS X 10.7 “Lion”. Long ago.

If you really want to try to connect to that NAS using SMB1 (and not a sled), see if using the Go > Connect to Server specification as cifs://198.51.100.12 where 198.51.100.12 is replaced by the local IP address if this NAS. CIFS might allow it to connect.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/connect-mac-shared-computers-servers-mchlp1140/mac

https://files.buffaloamerica.com/LS_Manual_web.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Docking-Tool-Free-Installation-EC-CH2B/dp/B09646W9PX/

It's worse than that, Jim....

I had one of these - it was my first ever NAS. The main thing I remember about it was that when whatever version of MacOS I was on at the time rolled to the next named version the Buffalo was inaccessible via Finder because of changes Apple had made to the network access protocol. I can't remember which protocol it was but the story was that Apple had updated it in the new OS to meet the spec and Buffalo hadn't or wouldn't issue a firmware update. There was a bit of handbags back-and-forth but neither firm would budge. The solution was, strangely, to download an app called muCommander which seemed happy enough to connect to the Buffalo. It all sounded pretty fishy to me (not an expert at network/file/server stuff) because I would have expected the access protocols to be in a layer between app and NAS, not built into the app. I traded up to a QNAP soon after and used the Buffalo as an archive for a while but it ended up in the loft.

It was a long time ago so my memory might be skipping some detail. I threw the enclosure away only the other year when I used one of the drives to repair a Time Capsule.

I think that as long as the OP hasn't got precious irreplaceable photos and docs that they are trying to recover then your advice to stick the drives in an enclosure is good. Or a great opportunity to experiment with a RasPi NAS setup to replace obsolete Time Capsules. If they ever do get it going then it certainly needs to be firewalled off from the internet.

Zurarczurx wrote:

It's worse than that, Jim....

I had one of these - it was my first ever NAS. The main thing I remember about it was that when whatever version of MacOS I was on at the time rolled to the next named version the Buffalo was inaccessible via Finder because of changes Apple had made to the network access protocol…

…I think that as long as the OP hasn't got precious irreplaceable photos and docs that they are trying to recover then your advice to stick the drives in an enclosure is good. Or a great opportunity to experiment with a RasPi NAS setup to replace obsolete Time Capsules. If they ever do get it going then it certainly needs to be firewalled off from the internet.

Apple tossed SMBv1 / CIFS overboard at Mac OS X 10.7, due to serious security issues with that.

Microsoft spent the next years reporting on the SMBv1 / CIFS flaws and on their since-successful plans to bury it, and y’all can look around for postings by then-Microsoft SMB product manager Ned Pyle for discussions about those flaws. Or at some of the ransomware that’s been specifically targeting SMBv1 / CIFS-accessible storage. Fun stuff, that.

A deprecation and a move to SMBv2 which is also part of why we’re here.

On a semi-unrelated note, I have to wonder if 2004-era HDDs are even particularly viable.

Going price for 2018-series Synology NAS two-bay boxes looks to be around USD$200. (Which will likely also support Time Machine server too, not that I’ve checked the DSM version specs.)

That's quite an old NAS and I vaguely remember there being protocol problems at the time - though I could be wrong.

Have you been using it recently or have you dug it out and thought about trying it?

Did it connect ok on Sequoia (the previous Mac OS)?

Has the NAS firmware been updated to use SMB 2 or 3 because I don't think the Mac supports the SMB1 that this certainly shipped with. I'm not an expert but I shouldn't be surprised if it won't run SMB2 or 3 and AFP - which it might have had - is not supported by Tahoe.

There used to be a companion app called NAS Navigator that found the NAS. If it still exists then download it, plug the NAS into one of the ethernet ports, power it up (it will take ages to start up and be ready) then run NAS Navigator.

If NN isn't available then if it is possible to connect then the easiest way would be to connect via it's webpage. Plug it into your one of your router's ethernet ports then you need to find it's IP address. You should be able to do this by opening your router's web page and finding the page that gives you a list of attached devices. Alternatively get an app called ipscanner. Or you could open terminal and type / copy

arp -a | grep :

This latter will give a list of all the attached kit and its IP address. If there's no name, just a ?, then try each one by typing the IP address into a browser address bar. One of them should be the Buffalo.

That exe is probably a Windows executable, though a few other platforms also use that.

Firmware from 2004 is deep into retro-computing territory. Deep. SMBv2 wasn’t available that far back.

If you have a space x86-64 box with some storage, TrueNAS or ZimaOS might be a more expeditious NAS choice.