I have a question about installation of OS and sleep function of NAS326 ...

Rhoniel

Hello,

I am thinking of buying a Zyxel NAS326 unit and I have two questions.

1) Where is OS/firmware installed on the Zyxel NAS326? Is it contained on the NAND flash or installed in the hard drives? Can I access the web UI of the Zyxel even when no hard drives are installed?

2)  Other NAS companies posted lists of activities and applications/add-ons ( like clock sync, IP assigned by DHCP server, using DDNS feature, using USB printer) which can disable the sleep functions of their NAS units.  Is there any such list of activities for Zyxel NAS units?

Thanks.

 

#NAS_May_2019

Mijzelf

Personally I have no experience with the 326, but I have a 520, which shares mostly the same firmware, and I have talked a lot about 326's in forums.

There are some daemons which can keep the disks busy, but they can be switched off, or I addressed them in my Tweaks package. Those are an ntpclient (for some reason written in python, which resides on the harddisk, while a binary version is also supplied on the ramdrive), some thumbnail generator, some uploader daemon. After patching/switching off my 520 doesn't spin up it's disks anymore. (Except when it has to, of course).

DHCP never was a problem, and NTP isn't after switching daemon, from python to binary.

I have no experience with using an USB printer, nor can I remember to have read about spinning up disks on printing. The main complaint I have read about USB printing is that it doesn't work with all printers.

Mijzelf

1) Both. A part of the firmware is an initramfs filesystem loaded from flash, another part (mainly the webinterface) is located on harddisk and extracted from a compressed filesystem in flash. The reason for this approach is that nand is slow. The harddisk is much faster.

The web UI can be used without harddisk, in that case the firmware blob is decompressed to a ram disk.

2) Not that I'm aware of.

Rhoniel

Thanks for your reply.

Is there anyway to prevent the OS from using hard drives?

Mijzelf

Yes. Don't put a disk in it. If you only use external disks, the OS won't use it, and you will still be able to access the data over network, albeit slower and with less options. You won't be able to install extra software either.

If you are willing to put a lot of effort in it, I wrote a package 'Tweaks' which can move all installed packages to an usb thumb drive. With some effort that can be changed in putting the OS part of the harddisk on that drive.

workspace

Yes, you can buy Zyxel NAS326 unit but don't put a disk in it as it is not good. Additionally, I would tell you about several logins but now I am going to tell you about workspacelogin email

Rhoniel

Hello  Mijzelf , Thanks for taking your time in answering my question. 

You have lot of experience with Zyxel NAS units and I was wondering if can answer a question for me. Do you think hard drive sleep function works reliably in Zyxel NAS326 unit? I am asking because my Synology unit wakes up the hard drives even when renewing IP address lease, syncing clock and using a USB printer. And some time it wakes up the HDs without any reason at all . My older DLink was super reliable in regards to not waking up the hard drive unless hard drive is accessed.

Have you experienced any issues with sleep feature of Zyxel units? 
Thanks, 

Mijzelf

Personally I have no experience with the 326, but I have a 520, which shares mostly the same firmware, and I have talked a lot about 326's in forums.

There are some daemons which can keep the disks busy, but they can be switched off, or I addressed them in my Tweaks package. Those are an ntpclient (for some reason written in python, which resides on the harddisk, while a binary version is also supplied on the ramdrive), some thumbnail generator, some uploader daemon. After patching/switching off my 520 doesn't spin up it's disks anymore. (Except when it has to, of course).

DHCP never was a problem, and NTP isn't after switching daemon, from python to binary.

I have no experience with using an USB printer, nor can I remember to have read about spinning up disks on printing. The main complaint I have read about USB printing is that it doesn't work with all printers.

Rhoniel

Thanks for your detailed reply. 

Rhoniel

Hello  Mijzelf , thanks for your tips.

My Zyxel NAS326 has arrived. So before I start tinkering with it, I was wondering is there any tutorial on how to install/use your 'Tweaks Package'?

And is there any list of which daemons need to be disabled to get sleep function working properly?

May thanks.

Mijzelf

Installation instructions here:

http://zyxel.diskstation.eu/Users/Mijzelf/zypkg-repo/README.html

The Tweaks package itself contains some documentation about the daemons.

itslave

Nevermind. I think I figured it out.