I recently tried some hacking of my Iomega iConnect.

The exercise was interesting but not very fruitful!

I presume that was the cause as the box died on me and transformed itself into a dead black box that was too light to even work as a doorstop.  Time to rebuild!

My first action was to download the Imager from the Iomega site.

Next, format a flash drive as FAT32.  Unzip the downloaded image file and copy the eight files onto the flash drive.

Now comes the fun part!

Disconnect all USB devices from the iConnect, and plug the flash drive into the rear USB port.

Holding down the little reset button on the back panel (I used a jeweller’s screwdriver), reset the power to the unit.,  The front indicator will burn blue for a short while and then turn red.  You can now release the reset button.  After a while all the front LEDS will burn solid blue.  At that point, remove the flash drive and repower the device.

The iConnect is now restored back to its factory settings which poses a problem – how do you access it?  It has reverted to a default IP address which will not be on your home network or home PC, therefore, even if you knew the address you still cannot access the device!

My solution –

First, to be on the safe side, I downloaded the Iomega Storage Manager and installed it (they do give a Linux version but it complains about missing libraries so I used the Windows version).  Select your OS here and then select the Iomega Storage Manager link under “Download Software & Drivers”.

Now connect your iConnect directly to your PC using a network cable.  If you have a wireless connection to your network, disable that.

You now need to change your PC’s network setting to the IP address 169.254.1.2, and a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0.  The Storage Manager should now indicate that it has found the iConnect.  In my case, each time the iConnect has an IP address of 169.254.1.211, but that may vary.

Now point your browser at the discovered IP address and you should have access to the iConnect.

Set the device’s IP to one on your own network and repower it.

At this point, you will need to reset your PC’s IP address to its normal values (or just enable wireless if applicable), disconnect the iConnect from your PC and connect it to the network.  You should now be able to access it from a browser using the IP address you allocated it.

Happy hunting!