NAS 326 problem

If you reboot them, how do you do that? If it reacts normally on the power button, the OS is still running. If you have to keep it pressed untill it's off, then the OS was crashed/vanished.

Is there something which was added to all 4 networks, last year? Are the NASses accesible from internet?

That is strange. Virtually every device which has a simple pushbutton power switch, has a dedicated microcontroller (MCU) to switch on/off the power. To switch the power on, the CPU and OS obviously cannot be used, as they are off. To power off, the 'push-event' is passed to the OS, which can shutdown gracefully. But if you keep the power button pressed, the MCU detects that, and simply cuts the power.

So if your box doesn't react on keeping the power button pressed, the MCU is crashed, or the button is defective. (When the button signal is not constant, the MCU might never kick in). Having said that, I am not in the posession of a 326, and so I can't be sure that functionality is programmed in the MCU. It is in the 325 and the 540. (And in every laptop I ever tested). Maybe worth to test on a working 326.

AFAIK on a 326 the MCU is also responsible for the fan. You can request the fan speed from the OS, but not change it.

I cannot really believe it's a ZyXEL set up. Where is the win? If you buy a NAS, and it doesn't live as long as you expected, then you won't buy that brand again, would you?

The only parts in a NAS which are susceptible to wear (apart from disks and fan) are the capacitors on the main board and in the power supply. But I can't think of a scenario where a box with defect capacitors can run for 2 or 3 days, and then fail. Unless the box crashes at disk spinup. The voltage might drop that much that the box freezes. Although I still would expect the MCU to carry on.

Could you as a test disable the disk spin down?

I have the exact same problem. The push button is unresponsive. It wouldn't matter if I held it in for a month. The only way that I can restart these is to pull the power cord momentarily. I too have four (4) of these servers (326). I might have #1 go offline one week and then it could go for 3 weeks w/out any further incidents. Then, when the next one fails, it might be server #2, #3 or #4. There's no rhyme or reason. The only thing that's consistent is that I am forced to pull the power cord since the push button does not respond. Everything else on the networks works as it should. I sure wish that someone had some answers. My guess is that the servers are simply not well thought out from a software standpoint.

Hi @Mijzelf,

I now have this behavior too (on 3 devices at the same time!). I recently installed the latest firmware on all devices. An automatic restart was defined on all devices on the first Friday of the month. Today is the first Saturday in the first month after the firmware update. 🙈

All devices are difficult or even impossible to reach via the LAN. Continuous PINGs keep breaking off and logging in via the website is rarely, if ever, possible. A restart is only possible by interrupting the power supply. No indication of defective HDD - neither on the device, nor in the admin page (if you ever get to it). Big catastrophe.

The push button to switch off via MCU has never worked on my devices (3 x 326), as stated in the operating instructions. At least 2 were bought "new" in stores. I always used the admin website to shut down or restart. Because of the price of the device, I simply “accepted” this as given.

Synology is significantly better - but also more expensive!
If I don't find a solution in the next few days (firmware downgrade), I will unfortunately have to replace all devices.