i got HDD 2.5 that had installed custom  firmware from http://wl500g.dyndns.org/1.9.2.7-5a/  and extra 60BG harddrive.
First i installed openwrt experimental package, but after restarting could not get any ssh or telnet port open. Removed harddrive, tried to flash whiterussian - did not help. Then re-flashed original asus firmware, re-flashed whiterussian binary again, but still only tftp port is open.

I recently installed WhiteRussion RC4 on a WL-HDD. My path of install was:
a) web i/f firmware upgrade from stock ASUS to Oleg's latest
b) web i/f firmware upgrade from Oleg's to WR RC4

This was all done without a HDD installed in the device. I found that the model-detection was faulty, and had to override it by setting an NVRAM variable to specify the device type (think it was boardtype=WLHDD from memory).

I then mounted an IDE drive in it, and after a bit of Googling here found out that I needed to install kmod-ide. You then need to update /etc/modules to load the drivers for the IDE chipset, see http://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=1416&p=1.

Hope this helps,

Sigurd

hm, problem was probably iptables dropping all, strange was that i could not telnet to it, after some time i tried again - and whoop! telnet was working. so i flushed the firewall and is ok.