NSA325v1 - Alternative firmware

titorio
titorio Posts: 5
in Personal Cloud Storage
Hello everyone,

I have an NSA325v1 which still covers what I need from a hardware perspective. However, due to Zyxel not providing any more firmware updates, I'd like to migrate to OpenWRT.

Has anyone in the forum managed to do this and is willing to share their experience?
Can the firmware be replaced without having to rebuild the entire RAID volume? 
Does anyone have a link to a HOWTO with more detailed instructions for the firmware replacement?

Thanks in advance!
Rob

Accepted Solution

  • Mijzelf
    Mijzelf Posts: 2,753  Guru Member
    250 Answers 2500 Comments Friend Collector Seventh Anniversary
    edited May 2022 Answer ✓
    Can the firmware be replaced without having to rebuild the entire RAID volume?
    Yes. OpenWrt installs completely in NAND, and doesn't touch the disks. Further the raid array runs default software raid and ext3, for which OpenWrt has packages to support it.

    If you search the OpenWrt forum you can find the struggle of someone who had to find out which packages were exactly needed on his NSA325.


    BTW, personally I'd rather go for Debian. (https://forum.doozan.com/). OpenWrt is stripped down to the metal, to fit on routers sparse on memory and storage, which has it's price.
    The NSA325 has plenty of memory and storage (if you use the disks), and it can run a full blown server OS like Debian. On the other hand, OpenWrt is designed to do as little writes as possible. So the hunt 'why is my disk spinning up now' becomes much easier.

All Replies

  • Mijzelf
    Mijzelf Posts: 2,753  Guru Member
    250 Answers 2500 Comments Friend Collector Seventh Anniversary
    edited May 2022 Answer ✓
    Can the firmware be replaced without having to rebuild the entire RAID volume?
    Yes. OpenWrt installs completely in NAND, and doesn't touch the disks. Further the raid array runs default software raid and ext3, for which OpenWrt has packages to support it.

    If you search the OpenWrt forum you can find the struggle of someone who had to find out which packages were exactly needed on his NSA325.


    BTW, personally I'd rather go for Debian. (https://forum.doozan.com/). OpenWrt is stripped down to the metal, to fit on routers sparse on memory and storage, which has it's price.
    The NSA325 has plenty of memory and storage (if you use the disks), and it can run a full blown server OS like Debian. On the other hand, OpenWrt is designed to do as little writes as possible. So the hunt 'why is my disk spinning up now' becomes much easier.

  • titorio
    titorio Posts: 5
    Thank you @Mijzelf!

    Did you mean it's easier to figure out why disks are spinning up with Debian or with OpenWRT?

    Also, is it possible to roll back to original firmware after migrating to an alternative one?
  • Mijzelf
    Mijzelf Posts: 2,753  Guru Member
    250 Answers 2500 Comments Friend Collector Seventh Anniversary
    Did you mean it's easier to figure out why disks are spinning up with Debian or with OpenWRT?

    No, I meant that on OpenWrt disks do not spin up as easily as on Debian. Default Debian has a lot of cron jobs which spin up the disks. OpenWrt does not even use the disks, so all spin ups are caused by your actions/installed suff.

    Also, is it possible to roll back to original firmware after migrating to an alternative one?

    If you backup your NAND, it is possible, but it's not trivial.
  • titorio
    titorio Posts: 5
    Thank you @Mijzelf!

    Did you mean it's easier to figure out why disks are spinning up with Debian or with OpenWRT?

    Also, is it possible to roll back to original firmware after migrating to an alternative one?

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