The Zyxel NSA310, NSA310b, NSA310s, NSA320, NSA325 is a Kirkwood based NAS (aka Network Attached Storage) with one HDD bay using SATA.

• 3.3V USB to serial adapter
• USB stick (FAT16 formatted, single partition)
  Up to date USB sticks were not detected correctly by the stock U-Boot. I had to use the “oldest” USB Stick I found, which supports USB 1.1 only! OpenWrt Forum serial-install-problems-on-nsa310
  Alternative: Use Setting up a TFTP server for TFTP Recovery/Install plus the description OpenWrt Forum - TFTP settings. However this has not been successfully tested yet.

This chapter is based on Doozan Forum
Carefully choose the correct U-Boot for your hardware version otherwise you brick the hardware!

Copy the u-boot.kwb and -factory.bin files to a FAT32 formatted USB stick with msdos partition table (single partition). Rename the -factory.bin to something simple like nsa310.bin.

This chapter is based on a post in the Doozan Forum.

• Connect the USB to Serial converter (3.3V not 5V!) to the pins of the NSA3xx main board (Tx → Rx; Rx ← Tx; GND → GND).
• Boot the stock firmware and access the NSA3xx through the serial interface
• Check the Ethernet MAC Address and note it

  fw_printenv ethaddr

• save the environment variables

  fw_printenv > current_envs.txt
  or
  blparam >  current_envs.txt

• Check bad blocks in NAND

Be sure there is no bad block in the first 1M of your NAND (check dmesg). This is very important, if there is bad block in the first 1M (8 blocks), don't flash u-boot, because you will almost certainly brick your box. Please post your question here (there is a work around for it).

  dmesg | grep -i 'bad'
    [    2.413231] Scanning device for bad blocks
    [    2.417731] Bad eraseblock 3 at 0x000000060000

This bad block is the 4th block which resides within mtd0 (block 0 to block 7). So u-boot should not be flashed.

Overview for advanced users (git commit)

Basically we command the device through a terminal (using the serial interface) to load and flash our files to NAND.

Please note that to write to NAND you have to erase the NAND first, which means all data on the NAND will be deleted! Meaning stock firmware, bootloader, settings and everything will be gone! So make sure you got the proper files ready before you start as it's vital that you flash the new bootloader before you restart your device as it would otherwise get soft-bricked.

You need u-Boot 2020.04 from snapshot repository. U-Boot from 19.07 have broken usb and ethernet.

Plug in the USB stick into the NAS (front USB) with the correct files and booting into u-boot (press any key on the serial communication to interrupt the boot progress).
The first step is to install OpenWrt's u-boot. Therefor send those commands in the U-Boot command line:

NSA310>>usb reset
(Re)start USB...
  USB:   scanning bus for devices... 3 USB Device(s) found
  scanning bus for storage devices... 1 Storage Device(s) found
NSA310>>fatload usb 0 0x1000000 u-boot.kwb
  reading u-boot.kwb
  ............................................
  524288 bytes read
NSA310>>nand erase 0x0 0x100000
  Erasing at 0xe0000 -- 100% complete.
  OK
NSA310>>nand write 0x1000000 0x00000 0x100000
  1048576 bytes written: OK
NSA310>>reset

In case you get below error message please use Setting up a TFTP server for TFTP Recovery/Install to load the files. IP configuration described serial-install-problems-on-nsa310. However this has not been tested successfully yet

NSA310>>usb reset
  USB:   scanning bus for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
  scanning bus for storage devices... 0 Storage Device(s) found
NSA310>> fatload usb 1 0x1000000 u-boot.kwb
** Can't read from device 1 **
** Unable to use usb 1:1 for fatload **
NSA310>> fatload usb 0 0x1000000 u-boot.kwb
** Can't read from device 0 **
** Unable to use usb 0:1 for fatload **

After the device reboots into the OpenWrt u-boot we adjust the device's MAC address (adjust the values, see the sticker under the NAS case):

NSA310>>setenv ethaddr AB:CD:EF:00:00:00
  Address in SROM is         AB:CD:EF:00:00:00
  Address in environment is  AB:CD:EF:00:11:11
NSA310>>saveenv
  Saving Environment to NAND...
  Erasing NAND...
  Erasing at 0xc0000 -- 100% complete.
  Writing to NAND... OK

Now we set the correct environment variables

NSA310>>setenv mtdparts 'mtdparts=orion_nand:0x00c0000(uboot),0x80000(uboot_env),0x7ec0000(ubi)'
NSA310>>setenv bootcmd 'run setenv bootargs; ubi part ubi; ubi read 0x800000 kernel; bootm 0x800000'
NSA310>>saveenv
  Saving Environment to NAND...
  Erasing NAND...
  Erasing at 0xc0000 -- 100% complete.
  Writing to NAND... OK
NSA310>>reset
  resetting ...

Then we proceed to flashing OpenWrt itself (which we called nsa310.bin for less typing):

NSA310>>usb reset
  USB0:   USB EHCI 1.00
  scanning bus 0 for devices... 3 USB Device(s) found
  scanning usb for storage devices...
  Use USB retry period from the environment: 15 second(s)
  1 Storage Device(s) found
NSA310>>fatload usb 0 0x2000000 nsa310.bin
  reading openwrt.bin
  4063232 bytes read in 210 ms (18.5 MiB/s)
NSA310>>nand erase.part ubi
 NAND erase.part: device 0 offset 0x140000, size 0x7ec0000
  Skipping bad block at  0x00540000
  Skipping bad block at  0x05580000
  Skipping bad block at  0x06120000
  Skipping bad block at  0x06aa0000
  Erasing at 0x7fe0000 -- 100% complete.
  OK
NSA310>>nand write 0x2000000 ubi 0x600000
  NAND write: device 0 offset 0x140000, size 0x600000
  Skip bad block 0x00540000
  6291456 bytes written: OK

Note that the number at the end indicates the size to write in hex. In this case up to 6 MiB. Increasing this number should work but has not been tested.

And now we reboot to OpenWrt:

reset

→ hardware.button on howto use and configure the hardware button(s). Here, we merely name the buttons, so we can use them in the above Howto.

The device has the following buttons:

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