How to reset NSA325v2 without loss of data?

AleXSR · February 2021

Hello everyone,
I own two NSA325v2 and I would like to factory reset both of them and start completely fresh. However, I have four HDDs installed and I obviously do not want to lose any of the data.

Is this possible? If so, how?

1. Remove the HDDs.
2. Reset the NSA325v2.
3. Hook up the HDDs to a Linux computer and erase all data not wanted.
4. Put HDDs into the NAS and after reboot they will be found.

That's what I was hoping for, but is that correct?

Thank you for your help.
Alex

Mijzelf · February 2021

Step 3 will be hard if you have no Linux experience. The data volume on a ZyXEL is always in a raid container, even when you have 1 volume per disk. So you'll have to assemble it, before being able to mount the volume.

A factory reset doesn't remove the data on the disks.

AleXSR · February 2021

It does not remove the data, but I thought that after a reset, you would have to re-initiate the drives which then wipes them.

Can you just reset and then the drives will be recognized again? I want to remove all share information also. Because the drives have lots of dead shares listed in the GUI and I am not sure if deleting e.g. an NFS share will not just remove the nfs folder.

I am actually thinking of resetting and then deactivating all built in shares and functions and simply installing vsftp. Because the built in FTP server seems to be a bit of a mess. I have to confirm the broken certificates every time I connect with Filezilla and sometimes during down-/uploads if there are a lot of files. That is truly annoying, because you come back after 3 hours and it stopped down- or uploading after 1 mins.

Mijzelf · February 2021

It does not remove the data, but I thought that after a reset, you would have to re-initiate the drives which then wipes them.

No. The reset doesn't touch the userdata. But the share configuration is deleted, so the shares are degraded to ordinary directories. In the shares menu you can promote them to share again.

and I am not sure if deleting e.g. an NFS share will not just remove the nfs folder.

An NFS share consists of a directory, and a line in /etc/exports. /etc/exports is a symlink to an internal file in the NFS package. If you remove the package, all shares are gone, but of course the directory will still exist.

the built in FTP server seems to be a bit of a mess. I have to confirm the broken certificates every time I connect with Filezilla

Why doesn't Filezilla store the confirmation? Installing another FTP server will not automagically provide valid certificates. A certificate has to be signed by a trusted CA, and that's hard on an embedded box. Let's encrypt can help here, but that involves more than installing another FTP server.

AleXSR · February 2021

Hmmm. I once deleted a share and I could have sworn that the folder itself was gone afterwards. I will try this. Because I am pretty sure that when you select to delete a share it also asks if you are sure you want to do that because all data will be erased as well.

Or is it just safe when you delete the entire package but you cannot delete an individual share?

Filezilla does not trust the certificate and hence does not offer the option to "always trust" that certificate. I won't have access to my VPN until the weekend, but I can check again what the issue with the certificate is. But I am guessing it will be the same for all NSA325v2, because I have the same issue on both of my devices.

AleXSR · February 2021

Update:

I managed to get off work a bit earlier today and used my extra time to check out the FTP problem again. The certificates had expired.

I thought that these would be somewhere inaccessible, but turns out I could just follow this guide:

https://support.zyxel.eu/hc/en-us/articles/360011611160-How-to-regenerate-original-self-signed-certificates-on-NAS-series-storage

Works now without any issues. Question is just whether or not VSFTP would still be more secure. I don't see any option on my NAS to properly restrict access to FTP and route to specific drives and restrict others. Admin user seems to be able to login to everything anywhere using built in FTP.

AleXSR · February 2021

Hmm, my edit got deleted.

So I will write it again.

The certificate had expired. I used this guide to create a new one:

https://support.zyxel.eu/hc/en-us/articles/360011611160-How-to-regenerate-original-self-signed-certificates-on-NAS-series-storage

Works now. But I cannot find a lot of possibilities to make the built-in FTP server secure. Can I set up a user to only be able to access a certain folder and ban him from others?

I can create a user and I can create a new share. But that share will not be a sole FTP share. It will be a global share for NFS, Samba etc.

Can I create a dedicated FTP share?

Mijzelf · February 2021

Wait, wait. What exactly do you want to achieve? You want to reset the NAS without data loss, but meanwhile you want to delete shares, and are concerned about if the backed directory will be deleted or not.

A share is an administrative concept. By resetting the NAS all shares are gone (except the default shares Video, Music, ...) but the backed directories are still there. One of the ways to delete them selective is to use WinSCP in combination with the ssh package. (Maybe Filezilla supports SCP too. Don't know if the ssh package will support the more modern SFTP).

The NFS shares are a different story. As far as I remember the directories are inside the package space, and so deleting the package might also delete all data directories. But the administration of the shares is in the text file /etc/exports, so manipulating them is easy.

I can check again what the issue with the certificate is.

I can guess. It's a self signed certificate, possibly already expired, and using a deprecated encryption.

znas4home · February 2021

Mijzelf said:

A factory reset doesn't remove the data on the disks.

Did you mean that factory reset from web interface doesn't remove the data? Because on the page 188 of the nas326 user guide there is a warning that all data will be deleted.

AleXSR · February 2021

I wanted to clean up all of the shares by removing them.But when I do so via the UI (for which the UI is for), then I get told that I will lose all my data.

So I was thinking of doing so by factory reset but removing the drives first, because I thought that might also wipe the data (I vaguely remembered reading it once).

Now it seems again unclear to me if I have to remove the drives first. Maybe I should remove the drives, do a factory reset and then disable all feature of the NAS and run only vsftp as a service (circumventing all the outfated, always limited and unsafe built features).

Mijzelf · February 2021

znas4home said:

Mijzelf said:

A factory reset doesn't remove the data on the disks.

Did you mean that factory reset from web interface doesn't remove the data? Because on the page 188 of the nas326 user guide there is a warning that all data will be deleted.

I see what you mean. I *think* it's a bug in that warning screen. The manual on that page says:

Reset Click Restore Factory Defaults to clear all user-entered configuration information and return the NAS to its factory defaults

'User entered configuration information' is not 'User data'.

The reset button on the back, when used for a factory reset, executes the script (/usr/local/btn/reset_and_reboot.sh):

#!/bin/sh
cp -a /etc/zyxel/pkg_conf /i-data/.system/zy-pkgs/
rm -rf /i-data/.media/twonkymedia
rm -rf /etc/zyxel/conf
rm -rf /etc/zyxel/webdav
rm -rf /etc/zyxel/storage/*
umount /etc/zyxel
ubirmvol /dev/ubi3 -N ubi_config
ubidetach -m 3
rm -rf /etc/zyxel/
#remove desktop config by hazel
[ -e "/i-data/.system/guicfg" ] && rm -rf /i-data/.system/guicfg
reboot

The user data is stored on volumes mounted in /i-data/, and as you can see it only deletes some twonkymedia database, and a desktop configuration.

How to reset NSA325v2 without loss of data?

All Replies

Categories

Consumer Product Help Center