Completely reset my TS-451

[adetogni]

I have since a few years a TS-451 upgraded with more memory that I use mostly as file server, for plex and backups. 4 disks in raid-5, no thick/thin volumes (according to my research, useless for me)

Over the year I really believe that something "broke" (possibly when I installed surveillance station) since from that time, the disks are constantly spinning and it's super slow. Just for example when I run plex with subtitles, it stutters - something that it never did. I tried to investigate for malware, processes...anything, I couldn't find the culprit.

So I decided to "reformat". What I want to do is to restore it as it comes from the box, obviously without losing data (about 2.5TB).

The problem is that I do not have a place to store these 2.5TB of stuff temporarily. I'm trying to understand if I can get it somewhere, but I don't want to spend like 100€ for an external drive for just a few days.

So the question is: is it possible to reset EVERYTHING (i.e. clean sheet, like it is unboxed right now) without losing data? I've seen a few procedures online, but I'm not sure....

(I'm open to suggestions on how and where to backup those 2.5TB circa of data temporarily...)

Thanks!

[dolbyman]

Backups ....2.5TB should be storable dirt cheap

Your data is either worth the couple of bucks for external backups or you can live without it.. sadly a calculation that has ended in a lot of tears for many users (if the decision was made to not have backups)

Up to you

[adetogni]

I do have backups on Glacier (pictures and important stuff) but not for movies (more than 2TB).

[dolbyman]

A 4TB backup USB drive is cheap (just got an additional 20TB USB drive on BlackFriday)...easy peasy

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

backing up 2-4tb is nothing... lemon squeezy . it's when u have to backup 20tb+ will u be crying blood (ur wallet anyway )

this is an example of an external usb storage drive (this is just an example. get whatever is cheapest at the time, whether it be seagate, westertn digital or other. just make sure whatever u get is reliable and cheap. if you want a better deal, usually you can get one during promos during black friday or similar events)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7JJpk9CFVU

you can easily purchase online. amazon, or whatever convenient local IT platform for you


Pay attention to the actual usable space you get after the drive is formated before you purchase (read the reviews)



anyway with the usb external storage, you can then plug the usb into the QNAP and set up hybridbackupsync to run your backups from the NAS to it. Either you run the job manually each time you want to backup, or setup automation. Whatever backup policy you opt for, just be sure you can live with the result in the event something happens and you need to restore the data from the backup.

The problem is that I do not have a place to store these 2.5TB of stuff temporarily. I'm trying to understand if I can get it somewhere, but I don't want to spend like 100€ for an external drive for just a few days.

well if u don't want to invest in backup and something happens, that's your own choice. at that point case closed, what else is there to discuss?

Just realize that hard drives eventually die, or something can possibly happen (raid rebuilds aren't a sure thing, or hardware issue, or an accident, etc etc...). What then? It's too late to look back and wish you had just invested in a backup, no point crying then. If the data is not important enough to pay for a backup then fine. but if it is.... then you know already what to do

but see, you're already in a situation you want to reset but you need to first backup your data somewhere else. THIS IS ANOTHER reason for the backup solution for situations like these. If you want to be cheap, you can try temporary moving the data to storage on your desktop pc (ASSUMING you had the storage space for it. If your desktop is win11, use SMB to connect to the share on your NAS, and copy the data from there to your desktop drive that has sufficient space to temporarily store the data). Then once you finished formating your nas, you can move your data back to your nas (same method). I still HIGHLY recommend you get a proper dedicated backup, and not wing it like this (because all this accomplishes is a temporary shuffling of data and not reliable long term backup storage)

i've used nas for 10+ years and a backup has ALWAYS saved my bacon at one point or another. So i cannot stress enough the importance of a backup.....

raid is not a backup
https://www.reddit.com/r/qnap/comments/ ... _a_backup/

i'm not trying to be mean, i'm just giving it to you straight



the external storage for backup isn't temporary as you put it. it goes hand in hand with your nas and will benefit you throughout the entire duration you use the NAS to store your data. So spending on that isn't a waste of money as you put it this is what i'm trying to make you realize before you find out the hard way.


here i found this for you. a 4tb external storage is roughly 100 usd

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/WCfFf7/


For a wider list, this shows all the different external storage devices. use sort by price. then change capacity size as you require
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/exter ... ice&page=1


both Seagate and Western Digital for 4tb external storage roughly neck to neck roughly around 89.99 USD ish


a good place to look for bargain deals is the datahoarder community. they usually spot good deals and post about them

e.g.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/co ... cmr_10999/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/co ... p_red_pro/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/co ... romo_code/

We’re sorry, this promotion has expired. Please check out our latest deals!

https://www.westerndigital.com/promo/black-friday



and be careful where you shop from

fiat124-

Newegg? Pass.


thewizardofazz-

Why is that? I just got a couple "raw" drives from them and hope I didn't royally screw up.


TheOneTrueTrench-

A few reasons.

1. They were caught sending known broken hardware to customers, blaming the customer for it when they KNEW NewEgg damaged it, then refusing to refund them.

2. They were caught banning the accounts of people who reported broken or missing parts of an item.

3. They were caught banning the accounts of people who reported not receiving items they ordered at all.

4. They keep shipping hard drives in an empty box with no packaging, and either refusing to RMA it, requiring the user to pay for returning it, or denying the RMA for damage they caused.

Basically, most of the time you get what you ordered, but if absolutely anything goes wrong, you need to assume that NewEgg is trying to rip you off.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/co ... romo_code/

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

So the question is: is it possible to reset EVERYTHING (i.e. clean sheet, like it is unboxed right now) without losing data? I've seen a few procedures online, but I'm not sure....

putting aside your backup (i've already talked about it extensively in the previous post),

to do a clean reinstall for your nas you can try a few things

note: before doing this, plz backup your important data first on a SEPARATE storage device....

you probably want to update to the latest STABLE QTS before you procede to reset your nas fyi

remove the drives from the nas, connect the drives to the desktop pc and wipe their partitions and do a quick format. So the next time you insert the drives into the QNAP, it will treat this like a new drive because u removed all traces of the previous partitions.


then reinsert them into the nas and procede with the steps (you can opt not to do the above, but thats what i do to be thorough)


Then in QTS do factory reset & reinitialize. below explains what doing this does and how to do it

Restore factory default settings and format all volumes

This restores the default system settings and formats all disk volumes.

1. Go to Control Panel > System > Backup/Restore > Restore to Factory Default.

2. Click Restore Factory Defaults & Format All Volumes.

3. Choose to restart or shut down the NAS after the system is reset.

4. Click OK.

Reinitialize the NAS

This deletes all data on the disks and reinstalls QTS.

1. Go to Control Panel > System > Backup/Restore > Restore to Factory Default.

2. Click Reinitialize NAS.

3. Choose to restart or shut down the NAS after the NAS is reinitialized.

4. Click OK.

in the event of malware, e.g. deadbolt, qnaps own advise is as follows
https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/faq/arti ... y-deadbolt


but our local community experts advice the following. this is probably the best method to do for peace of mind

QSnatch Malware - What to do?

you can download malware remover, most infection compromise the system in a way that you cannot run it anymore after the infection

a complete wipe (including DOM, if you unspecified NAS model has one) and then a restore from backups is the safest method

There is just a basic BIOS plus the DOM. All configuration data is held on a HDD partitions, span as a RAID.

If you are concerned about the DOM, you might want to re-flash it to a factory default one, using the DOM recovery procedure. Double check also that any autorun.sh is removed form the relate mtd device.

u/JBStroodle-

After being hit with QLocker, there is no way to tell if a back door was installed so how do you do a deep full wipe of the firmware that would catch any remnant Trojans?
Can you never trust the hardware again? Or is there a way to do a deep reinstall of the firmware? Also, is there a way to do this without destroying the volume on the NAS?

Vinnipinni-

You should be able to reinstall the firmware on the DOM. If you don't want to remove your volume you can't completely wipe everthing. I’d suggest to do a factory reset of the device using QTS, reinstall the firmware on the DOM and do another factory reset using QTs, just to be safe.

For details, visit the QNAP Wiki Entry.

JBStroodle-

What does DOM mean?


Vinnipinni-

It's the flash unit where QTS is installed on. Kinda similar to a usb stick. I'm unsure if it's even possible to place malware on it and I personally wouldn't bother with it, you do kinda need to understand what you're doing.

Edit: Since a update of QTS overwrites the Dom it’s definitely possible to write malicious code to it if a vulnerability is found and executed. It doesn’t mean that it’s infected for sure, just that it could be.

https://www.reddit.com/r/qnap/comments/ ... no_way_to/



Firmware Recovery Guide for x86 based NAS
Last modified date: 2022-11-24

https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/faq/arti ... -based-nas


the instructions are pretty thorough, but make sure you do not make any mistakes when doing this. but like others pointed out, you could skip reflashing dom, but you will always be left wondering if you didn't do a thorough enough reset (to disinfect malware)... i only highlight the possibility and whether you want to be more thorough in doing a very clean reset or not, your choice but just be careful when following the instructions.


and don't forget to run the malware scanner from appcenter. how effective this app is, no idea. But it doesn't harm you scanning with it (at least twice. before and after resetting your nas)

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

Over the year I really believe that something "broke" (possibly when I installed surveillance station) since from that time, the disks are constantly spinning and it's super slow. Just for example when I run plex with subtitles, it stutters - something that it never did. I tried to investigate for malware, processes...anything, I couldn't find the culprit.

how exactly is your nas configured? like, did you by chance expose your nas online? like opening up ports in your router firewall? or having upnp enabled on both the router and your qnap?

If yes, then ya, i would highly suspect malware had managed to infect your nas at some point eventually.

If your nas is not exposed to the internet, and you did not install qpkgs outside the trusted sources e.g. default appcenter, and you did not store dodgy stuff on your nas, then it's a bit less likely to have malware.

There is some troubleshooting you can do but i won't get into that. But yes if u suspect malware, definitely do a clean reset of your nas.

But i'm not sure that will be sufficient. You should probably check your other networking gear while you are at it. When was the last time you updated your router? your client devices on the network? virus/malware scan? also double check your router/firewall is properly configured as well. my point is, just resetting the nas may not solve your issues, if you don't check the other stuff as well.

[adetogni]

Thanks everyone, especially you @moogle, for your extensive answers.

Before anyone worries, I am *very* cautious on data. Actually, the NAS is my second layer of a 3-2-1 backup strategy. Data is backed up on an external veracrypt-encrypted hard disk, which is daily synchronized with my nas, which is weekly synchronized with Glacier. In the last year I changed company and they take care of my work pc data backup (not that I "trust" them, but I don't have admin rights on this pc so I can't install syncback or other backup software and I don't want to backup work-related stuff on an external unencrypted drive) so now the NAS is the 2nd layer.

I have suffered from data loss and I'm the advocate for backup for anyone, so trust me I am very aware of it, including NAS is not backup.

The only thing that I do not backup are movies (and not, they're not pr0n ) since it's a massive dataset and ...well...now with Netflix and Prime are somewhat expendable. I won't be happy to lose something like 650+ movies...but I could live with it, compared to lose pictures or work.

But anyway, you're right, I can definitely invest 100€ in buying an external 4tb drive and automatically sync all nas data there in case of a full loss. 100€ for the peace of mind is ok.

Over the year I really believe that something "broke" (possibly when I installed surveillance station) since from that time, the disks are constantly spinning and it's super slow. Just for example when I run plex with subtitles, it stutters - something that it never did. I tried to investigate for malware, processes...anything, I couldn't find the culprit.

how exactly is your nas configured? like, did you by chance expose your nas online? like opening up ports in your router firewall? or having upnp enabled on both the router and your qnap?

If yes, then ya, i would highly suspect malware had managed to infect your nas at some point eventually.

If your nas is not exposed to the internet, and you did not install qpkgs outside the trusted sources e.g. default appcenter, and you did not store dodgy stuff on your nas, then it's a bit less likely to have malware.

There is some troubleshooting you can do but i won't get into that. But yes if u suspect malware, definitely do a clean reset of your nas.

But i'm not sure that will be sufficient. You should probably check your other networking gear while you are at it. When was the last time you updated your router? your client devices on the network? virus/malware scan? also double check your router/firewall is properly configured as well. my point is, just resetting the nas may not solve your issues, if you don't check the other stuff as well.

The nas is exposed, but through a router with all port closed. I can connect to it from the outside only with VPN, with a specific port opened on the router. Upnp is disabled (on both).
I did not install any weird qpkg.

What happened is that it was running fine and I installed the "old" surveillance cnter, just out of curiosity since I have a webcam in house and I was checking how it was working. Not that I need to record video. Alll good, but as far as I remember it wasn't working fine. So I installed the "new" surveillance (3+ years ago?) and from that moment everything broke. In fact I think I opened a post here, since I couldn't understand. My nas that was blinking only from time to time now it was constantly blinking and drives were NEVER spin down. Considering that, especially at that time, was just for plex and backups, it was weird. Tried uninstalling, a lot of troubleshooting, process check...nothing found.

So here we are after 3+ years, it's time to do a classic "reinstall windows"

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

ur welcome

The nas is exposed, but through a router with all port closed. I can connect to it from the outside only with VPN, with a specific port opened on the router. Upnp is disabled (on both).
I did not install any weird qpkg.

correct. disable upnp. for remote use vpn.

how exactly is your vpn configured?

qvpn on qnap is one way, but this is not the top recommendation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-XLBxaj9LY


the recommended vpn setup for remote access to the QNAP is the following

1. openvpn or wireguard vpn server on a router e.g. pfsense
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgielyUFGeQ

2. tailscale (if you are concerned about the company behind tailscale, there is an alternative called headscale which you can self host, but this is harder to setup especially for a newbie)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-q-8R67OPY

3. pivpn using a raspberrypi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4zlrc0F4NU


there is further discussion on how best to do remote access as safely as possible
https://www.reddit.com/r/qnap/comments/ ... _internet/

[FSC830]

See last link in my post for a complete reinitialization of NAS (data will be lost).
So buy your USB drive first and copy the movies.

Regards

[adetogni]

how exactly is your vpn configured?

qvpn on qnap is one way, but this is not the top recommendation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-XLBxaj9LY

Currently is through OpenVPN but part of the "resetting" procedure was also to review and double check the networking, since that area is kinda of a gray area for me, I can code in like 5 languages but with IP addresses and NAT I get confused. In fact, lately I cannot connect anymore from remote (only through qnapcloud), most probably due to a misconfiguration of openvpn. I'll look at your video.
I also have an old router where I should be able to install dd-wrt and configure as a firewall. It's always a matter of time to study and configure everything. It might be not that much important setting up a firewall once I open just the right ports on the router...

I would avoid raspberry since it's becoming very expensive the PI lately.

[ritters]

1. openvpn or wireguard vpn server on a router e.g. pfsense

AVM made WireGuard very easy to setup with the release of the newest OS for their Fritz.boxes. It won't take two minutes to setup a tunnel.

[FSC830]

...lately I cannot connect anymore from remote (only through qnapcloud),r...

I would avoid raspberry since it's becoming very expensive the PI lately.
...

Even now a raspberry Pi is much less expensive than paying a ransom to hackers!
But only you can decide the worth of your data.
Stop using this f****g myqnapcloud asap.

Regards

[adetogni]

...lately I cannot connect anymore from remote (only through qnapcloud),r...

I would avoid raspberry since it's becoming very expensive the PI lately.
...

Even now a raspberry Pi is much less expensive than paying a ransom to hackers!
But only you can decide the worth of your data.
Stop using this f****g myqnapcloud asap.

Regards

Well, once you have data backed up weekly on glacier (versioned)...a ransom attack won't be much of an issue, more an annoyance.

I wonder however why myqnapcloud is bad for you. I just heard rumors...

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

1. openvpn or wireguard vpn server on a router e.g. pfsense

AVM made WireGuard very easy to setup with the release of the newest OS for their Fritz.boxes. It won't take two minutes to setup a tunnel.

u mean this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb-s9NOx3mM

yes as long as vpn server from router, is good