I’ve got a Freecom DualDrive Network Center NAS. It was always pretty basic, but it worked OK. A while back the mapped drive failed to reconnect – a bit of Googling revealed that it used SMB1.0 which was deprecated but could be re-installed through Control Panel. Fine.
More recently it failed to connect again, and this time I was also unable to connect to the admin interface on //ddnetworkcenter. The router (PlusNet Hub) says it’s allocated an IP address, and if I unplug it it disappears from the list of active network devices, so it looks like it is responding at some level. But a ping to the IP address fails with Destination Host Unreachable.
So, is it dead or is it another protocol or firewall issue? Any suggestions?

Host Unreachable suggests the router is doing something bad like failing to route or unexpectedly firewalling. Maybe power cycle that?

Can you connect directly to it to troubleshoot, then get it back on the network once it’s working?

Is the NAS IP address in the same subnet range as the IP address of the device you are using to ping?

Are both devices connected straight to the router or is there something else involved? E.g. if the NAS is connected directly to the router but your other devices are connected to a Wifi mesh network they may have been allocated IP addresses on different subnets.

Thanks for the suggestions folks.

The addresses are in the same subnet range. I’ve tried plugging the NAS and the laptop into the router directly, same result. I’ve re-started the router.

I don’t think there is any way to connect to the NAS directly.

Have you an option to ftp to the NAS, I had to do that to ours recently when it wouldn’t connect via windows even with SMB 1.0 enabled. Although if it’s not appearing on the network you may have more of a problem

a bit of Googling revealed that it used SMB1.0 which was deprecated but could be re-installed through Control Panel. Fine.

I pre-empted this before I opened the thread.

Honestly, it’s not fine. If it requires SMBv1 then what I’d do is take the drives out of the enclosure, then set fire to it. SMBv1 is a massive security risk and the last thing you want to be doing is re-enabling it in Control Panel, it should’ve died with XP.

Buy a new NAS. Or a SATA USB enclosure off Amazon for a fiver, do you even need a NAS?

@Cougar, you’re predictable, possibly correct, definitely not helpful, but thanks for trying 🙂

A 10 year old NAS with 10-year old disks is clearly due for replacement. I know about SMB. I just want to see if I can get to the device to check that there isn’t anything on there that I’ve forgotten about, so I wanted to see if STW had any bright ideas.. Plan B was always to get an enclosure off eBay and read it off that.

“Possibly”?

If you know better and you’re concerned about the content on those drives then simply restore it from your backups. 😛

It might, but I’d have low confidence in a replacement enclosure being likely to work. If your goal is ‘just to check’ then I’d be spinning up an XP machine isolated from t’Internet.