I purchased a "spare" Thecus N4100Pro. It arrived without login credentials, and I was able to glean info from the 'net to reset it to defaults. Not easy, because this model does NOT have a hardware reset button.
After a lot of effort, I was unable to convince it to accept a firmware upgrade to 5.03.02.8 (I think a file of that version is
here) , the last available firmware for this model. At the GUI, it would churn for a while and eventually yield an error.
These units store their OS on a DOM: Disk on Module. It's a type of flash storage or SSD, which uses the 44-pin IDE connector, as do most 2.5" laptop hard disks. I ended up cloning the DOM from my "old" N4100Pro to my new one, side-stepping the problem with the OS itself rejecting the firmware upgrade.
This wasn't easy enough for me to make good guesses, and there's surprisingly little good info available on this via Google. Most information assume you'll be plugging the DOM into a suitable mainboard and reading/writing to it from there.
I use a $40 StarTech USB to 2.5"/3.5" SATA/IDE all-purpose converter (
USB3SSATAIDE) for a lot of HD and SSD cloning and upgrades. I've used this thing for years, and it's great for this kind of thing. Problem is, DOMs have a 44-pin
female connector and 2.5" hard disks have a male connector. The mismatched gender thing threw me for a long time. I kept staring at the connectors and failing to see how to mate them correctly.
"Gender changer", you say? Not so fast. You cannot just use, say, a header row of straight-through pins (I tried: smoke!). Here's the N4100Pro DOM:
- Thecus N410Pro DOM
- Thecus_N4100Pro_DOM_02b.jpg (1.36 MiB) Viewed 6369 times
Look at a typical 2.5" 44-pin HDD's pinout, and how it mates to the StarTech Converter:
- StarTech converter, and IDE HDD pinout
- StarTech_USBUSB3SSATAIDE_01-1b.png (1.07 MiB) Viewed 6368 times
But Pin 1 on the DOM is on the wrong row. On this DOM, the top & bottom rows are reversed from a standard 2.5" HDD,
AND the solder pads on the back of the DOM are
also reversed. Tricky.
- Thecus N410Pro DOM, Front & Back showing header row reversal.
- Thecus_N4100Pro_DOM_01b.jpg (1.83 MiB) Viewed 6348 times
The way to connect this DOM to the StarTech Converter (or anything other than a mainboard that's wired for a DOM, I guess) is this adapter:
Amazon JXSZ 2.5" IDE PATA DOM 44-Pin(43pin) Male to 44-Pin(43pin) Male IDE 44pin M-M Adapter
- JXSZ W90551 44-pin IDE DOM adapter @ Amazon
- JXSZ_W90551_DOM_Adapter_03b.png (222.7 KiB) Viewed 6369 times
- JXSZ W90551 44-pin IDE DOM adapter
- JXSZ_W90551_DOM_Adapter_01b.jpg (922.7 KiB) Viewed 6369 times
- JXSZ W90551 44-pin IDE DOM adapter
- JXSZ_W90551_DOM_Adapter_02b.jpg (897.98 KiB) Viewed 6369 times
- Thecus N410Pro DOM, Adapter, StarTech converter
- Thecus_N4100Pro_DOM_06b.jpg (495.31 KiB) Viewed 6369 times
- Thecus N410Pro DOM, Adapter, StarTech converter
- Thecus_N4100Pro_DOM_07b.jpg (636.67 KiB) Viewed 6369 times
That JXSZ W90551 adapter flips the rows of the header as it changes the gender. Try to find that adapter anywhere in a hurry . . . at this time, it's almost unobtainium if you are in a hurry. I waited three weeks to get one via Amazon, and it is the perfect tool for this job.
After getting the physical connector to read/write to the DOM sorted out, and obtaining a spare DOM, then I had to read from the DOM with the newer firmware, write to a file, then swap DOMs in the StarTech converter and write the file to the DOM.
To read from the source DOM, I first used the Ubuntu GUI utility
Disks to find which disk name Ubuntu gave it when I plugged the converter into a USB port. These days, Linux enumerates disks sort of alphabetically, eg /dev/sd
a, /dev/sd
b, etc. There are many, many ways of determining what identifier Linux assigns to storage media, with the
lsblk command being one of the easier ones. However, with Ubuntu's adoption of
snap packaging and runtime environment the system now adds "loops" to /dev ; my system has around 29 of them, this makes reading lsblk output difficult and error-prone. Give me a GUI and a nice picture instead. This screenshot shows the Afaya/Thecus DOM selected in
Disks, with the "/dev/sda" highlighted:
- Linux GUI "Disks" utility
- Thecus_N4100Pro_DOM_08b.png (108.66 KiB) Viewed 6357 times
Using that, I know how Linux labelled the Avaya/Thecus N4100Pro DOM in the StarTech converter that's feeding the PC via USB. Below is how I read the contents of the DOM and write it to a file:
Code: Select all
asavage@Ubuntu1:~/Documents$ sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=./N4100-backup-5.03.02.8.bin status=progress bs=16M
[sudo] password for asavage:
128188416 bytes (128 MB, 122 MiB) copied, 9 s, 13.7 MB/s
7+1 records in
7+1 records out
128188416 bytes (128 MB, 122 MiB) copied, 9.33918 s, 13.7 MB/s
I then swapped out the Thecus DOM from the StarTech converter, for a spare DOM I'd picked up from eBay for $6 for this purpose. Then reverse the
if and
of of the
dd command, and it writes from the file to the new DOM:
Code: Select all
asavage@Ubuntu1:~/Documents$ sudo dd of=/dev/sda if=./N4100-backup-5.03.02.8.bin status=progress bs=16M
7+1 records in
7+1 records out
128188416 bytes (128 MB, 122 MiB) copied, 23.7036 s, 5.4 MB/s
Like many things in life: easy . . . once you know how.