Zyxel NSA325 v2 only System LED falshes while installing

[smaxer]

Hi everyone,

I'd like to install arch on my new Zyxel NSA325 v2. I followed the instruction and prepared a USB Fat32 drive with the following content:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
# fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 7.5 GiB, 8027897856 bytes, 15679488 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000d52a1

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 2048 15679487 7838720 b W95 FAT32

#md5sum *
b424c92a70affb0f4f0fa0e5db30c682 nsa310_check_file_C0
27bc5de0c2debfc2be36a6f71642bdec rootfs.tgz
96a21fd6cd40a6f6e56f006dff2882ed salted_md5sum_3x0
63b3fad264db12d4859226f2ec4bb5fc usb_key_func.sh
2fef8e398f6794e9cc5aba2432dbd04f usb_key_func.sh.2
')

put a HDD (2TB or 4 TB doesn't matter) in the left slot. Usb in the rear and power up. The only thing flashing (even for several hours) is the topmost System LED. The LEDs for the left HDD slot and the USB are ON but nothing is read form the USB an nothing is written to the HDD.

Obviously I have no clue whats going on... and my ordered serial adapter takes a while to ship form Hong Kong... so for the moment I can't "look in" to see whats going on.

Things that I'm unsure about:
1. What do you mean by "bare, unparitioned HDD" in the installation process? Is it just a warning the the HDD will be overwritten or has the HDD to be in a special format?
2. The NAS firmware version is 4.7 don't know if they changed anything in the update process....

So if you guys have any idea or if you see that I'm doing anything terrible wrong please tell me!

Best,
smax

[WarheadsSE]

I mean that the hard drive should quite literally, never have been partitioned and if it has all traces should be removed.

[smaxer]

Thanks for the reply Warhead! So a
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M count=100
')

should be enough? Or how would you remove all traces?

[WarheadsSE]

If it was MBR, yeah, that should have been enough.

Also, does the unit boot to stock without either device attached?

[smaxer]

Yes it does. When I remove the USB Drive it boots to sock and I can use the NAS normally.

I'm going to try the "dd" method later today.

Thanks again,
smax

[smaxer]

Overwriting the first 100 or 1000 blocks with zero didn't help either. Still the same behaviour...

Does anybody have another idea?

[WarheadsSE]

Sadly, you almost need to have a serial cable to get the lower-level information on what is actually happening.

[smaxer]

The problem was the USB device. I simply used a different USB drive and it worked like a charm.

Thanks,
smax