Customer Reviews

D-Link DNS-323 2-Bay Network Attached Storage Enclosure

5 star:		(107)
4 star:		(83)
3 star:		(27)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(31)

 

 

I needed a network storage, and I wanted some degree of user-extensibility (hackable). After much research, DNS-323 became an obvious choice, at least based on specification, figures, reviews and user reports. The budget was under $200, and it's incredible how expensive NAS boxes are in general.

Here are some models I considered and why they didn't make the cut:
Linksys Storage Link for USB 2.0 Disk Drives NSLU2 an amazingly flexible NAS that's also cheap. It has a very large and healthy development community for its hacks. However it requires external enclosure and is much slower. NSLU2 also doesn't spin down the drives by default (reports say you can with some tweaks). Has the least functions out of the box. Very tempting alternative however, due to its being a favorite platform for hackers/developers and consequently a legendary bang for the dollar.
Linksys Network Storage System with 2 Bays (NAS200) follow up on the NSLU2, has two SATA bays, seemed perfect. However Linksys decided to drop a dog of a chip in there, making it slower than even the old NSLU2 out of the box. The chip is also different and odd compared to NSLU2, making it a dubious candidate for development projects. Heat dissipation is also a reported problem, as well as fan noise. It's relatively new so no development projects (hacks) are centered around it. I wonder with the lackluster hardware if it ever will.
Buffalo LinkStation Pro Shared Network Storage LS-320GL - NAS - 320 GB - Serial ATA-150 - HD 320 GB x 1 - Gigabit Ethernet Has everything--gigabit, speedy processor, large ram-but only 1 bay and comes with a drive that I don't need. Replacing the drive voids warranty, and the drive doesn't spin down (big no). Isn't as well made as there are numerous reports of it failing after a few months. Also a very hackable unit like NSLU2, and were designed to encourage it.

I came into the decision on my DNS-323 with a slight mistrust of D-Link products, after having owned several buggy network hardwares in the past. The justification for the purchase was its reported speed by many, often comparable or beating units more than several times its cost. It's one of the few "budget" boxes that actually delivers the speed it promises.

It has a 500mhz processor, the Marvell 88X7042 SATA controller and marvell's 88E1111 gigabit network handler. All proven workhorses. a very efficient case design with small volume/footprint, the dual bay sata with raid, standard linux file format (ext2), the ability to spin down and its operating power efficiency. For the money, there's really none other on the radar with these credentials.

Receiving the product is another revelation. I'm the obsessive-compulsive type who can see every single flaw, which tend to be plenty on mass produced products these days. I couldn't find one scratch on the brushed metal sides of this NAS case. The product is very solid, with hefty metallic casing (I don't think you can find any NAS box made of metal under $200.. or maybe even $500), that actually has a suede rubberized finish on top and bottom. The metal case proved to be important as it helped dissipated the heat of the drives as I turned off the fan with scripts later. It is also VERY spatially efficient, with no space wasted. The only gap between the drives were well thought out as cooling channel. I don't think it could get any smaller without hurting its function. The speed-controlled fan is very quiet to the point of being nearly silent; an amazing feat due to its size (40mm). I don't think I have ever seen a small fan that quiet. The lights are discreet, no Christmas colors. The box looked great and exuded quality. I can't complain about the build quality at all. It's just well made with solid components. D-link's accountant must be asleep at the switch.

Installation is easy. You just open the front face cover and slide in the drives. Connect the power and network cable and that's it. It comes with (or you can download) a software that automatically maps the drive for you. (you can do it yourself too quite easily. it's not proprietary in any way) The configuration page is also very straightforward. Perhaps a bit too plain vanilla, but what it has just works. Have been using ftp and itunes server extensively. I haven't tried raid 1 (which reportedly have issues with older firmwares) or the upnp media server. Otherwise I haven't had problems with the firmware, which I upgraded to 1.03. Firmware 1.04 is due soon, and I tried the beta versions as well without yet running into problems.

The speed didn't disappoint. I didn't have a gigabit network at home though, but at the 100mbps ethernet, it registers 99%+ throughput on transfers. It was able to sustain the speed for the entire 400+gb I transferred on initial set up without any breaks or stops. In other words I haven't been able to touch its limit yet. After almost 3 weeks of constant use, there's not one problem on its basic features: storage and serving files over the network. It just does what it should, even if I fancied more imaginative features.

Now the hacking part: I've discovered after my purchase that there's a sizable contingent of users on the web who have tackled and extended the capability of this solid piece of hardware. I really hoped D-link was stronger on their firmware design or implement more features, but it looks like they have had problems and thus became conservative, resutling in the plainness of the standard firmware.

If you google fun_plug or check out dns323.info, you'll find all the information you need to explore the untapped potential of this rather capable hardware set. I was able to get this little puppy to be a bittorrent client, a web server, upgrade the itunes server, deliver media streaming over http, customize its fan control (it really doesn't run that hot with my wd5000aaks, helped by the metal case. The hack cuts on fan power and the already unnoticeable noise, and maybe even lower dust levels), and use its usb for storage as well as print server; and I just started playing with it 3 days ago! There are also many security enhancements that solves many of the network functional lackings mentioned in other reviews here. Due to the way the firmware is written, you don't even need to change the firmware to attach all these features. I'm not good with hacking, but it's really not that hard for most of these "hacks". I suspect most people can follow the instructions just fine.

To conclude: this is a solid NAS hardware that has a doubter and a miser convinced of its value for the dollar in the course of the past 2.5 weeks. As a basic network storage, this thing works very well. If you venture into the available hacks, you can really make it work like you dreamed it and maybe even more. I am not giving it 5 stars only because I wish D-link provides some if not all these wonderful hacked features to suit its rather robust hardware, and that I only had limited exploration of its features. However, as it stands, it works quite reliably and fast out of the box. That is probably the most important to most people. For me, it delivered.


4/10/2009 UPDATE
The unit still works very reliably, serving as a server that just about never failed in any way. Thanks to ever improving "attached" plug-in packages, its service options have diversified greatly, working well as my home file/print/web/media server while I travel.

All is well, until the most recent upgrading of the drives, where I wanted to add an extra drive with the old one in one of the bays. What it is supposed to do, and as it does also display in its configuration page, is to format the new one while leaving the old one alone. The prompt also specifically says so. What it did instead, however, was to format both drives, taking my old drive's data with it.

It is not a user error, but a firmware flaw. Later I found that it is reported to be a problem since firmware version 1.04, and mine is the latest of 1.06. This is a mass storage device often entrusted with possibly terabytes of data, especially with today's cheaply available large capacity hard drives, and about two years into its product life cycle--this sort of engineering negligence is bordering criminal, and downright pathetic. Two thumbs down for D-Link on this one, and I wish I have the means to hold them responsible.

That said, I cannot take away the star ratings, although I would remove a star at least. The hardware is still robust and high quality, and I observed and suspect it's something of an open/shared hardware platform that's not entirely due to D-Link's credit. The stock firmware however is just astoundingly dangerous. It is a good idea to back up your data, especially if you plan to change the disk configuration (add/remove disks, switching on RAID, etc.) or upgrading firmware. Still, it's quite inexcusable, not to mention inconvenient (forced to back up a possible back-up storage device? Did the point just become moot?). Just something I want you to know before committing, or until they fix this 800lb-gorilla problem.

Frankly I think it would serve D-Link better to make the firmware open source, since they obviously couldn't find the means to apply themselves to make it at least safe. However, this unfortunately joins many other d-link products that suffered from incomplete product development. A shame, but that's never my choice to make. You may still have the power of the wallet to elect, and with ever increasing NAS options out there, my review may not be entirely correct about available alternatives anymore.

Caveat Emptor. Thank you.

The D-Link DNS-323 is a dual SATA enclosure, boasting an embedded Linux running on a Marvel board with an ARM5 processor. You put in the drives, and it configures them using the software raid stack from its embedded Linux. It has gigabit ethernet, and as NAS functionality goes, it only supports SMB shares. That's about where the coolness ends - with the specs. Even though it runs Linux, it is not capable of serving NFS. Even though it runs Linux, it is not capable of using ext3. But I am getting ahead of myself.

First thing I had to do based on the advice pouring from the Internet was to upgrade its firmware to the latest and greatest 1.0.4. Then I put in my 2 x 1TB drives and I started configuring it. The web interface gives the usual choice of jbod/raid0/raid1 - and after choosing raid1, it asked me how much RAID1 I want, promising that the rest will be used for a JBOD setup. I selected a 500GB setup for RAID1, which gave me an extra 1TB of JBOD scratch space I planned on using for stuff like local mirrors and caches. I did a samba mount for the RAID1 volume, dropped about 20GB of stuff on it and then proceeded to test the failure handling of the DNS-323. Power off, pull out one drive, start it up in degraded mode. As expected, the JBOD volume is gone, but the RAID1 one is still going strong, data is still there. I zero out the drive I pulled out, power off, insert it back, and power on again.

This is where the fun started. One would expect the device to reconstruct the RAID1 array, and give me an option to remake my JBOD from the space not being used for the RAID1. Sure enough, the web interface prompts me resync the new drive2, issues a failure, asks for a reboot. Upon reboot it asks again to resync the newly inserted drive2, this time it looks like it is making it through, half an hour later it says it is happy and asks me to reboot. Fine, I reboot, next time it comes up it prompts me to resync the newly inserted drive1 (note - this is the *other* drive that I have not touched, now it thinks that drive is newly inserted as well). This is testing, so I click ok, it fails, asks for reboot; reboot, starts syncing fine, completes, asks for reboot. On next reboot, it asks to resync the newly inserted drive2, and the cycle seems to keep on repeating.

On the positive side, the data continued to be available. But maybe because it was running degraded most of the time, I don't know why, it stopped being reliable. I would get random read-only errors from the smb mounts, directory tree corruption (files that should be in subdirectories show up in the root of the share), a whole bunch of problems that made me put the thing in the box it came from and send it back to Amazon. I wasn't even trying to stress test it and it failed miserably. Totally not worth my time dealing with it. How many people that declare themselves happy with the device have actually tested the recovery from a hard drive failure?

Based upon its specifications and price, this product seems like a great deal. And if you just need to share hard drives over your network without any security or passwords, it seem to work very well.

Here's why I'm returning mine.

1. Although the device is advertised as supporting the EXT3 file format (which is more secure than EXT2), D-link's original firmware apparently had many, many problems with EXT3, so Dlink updated the firmware. Did they re-write the firmware to correct the bugs? No. They just removed all support for EXT3. Unfortunately, they didn't re-write the manual, so if you read the manual, you'll wonder where the EXT3 options went, and whether your unit is defective or not.

If you don't know what EXT2 and EXT3 is, check out Wikipedia. Suffice it to say that EXT3 is better, more robust, and has better protection against data loss. Most NAS devices uses EXT3 by default. Although this device is advertised to support EXT3, it hasn't since a firmware update in early 2007.

2. Dlink did exactly the same thing with the Disk Utilities, including a scandisk and defrag feature. Again, they're still in the documentation, but nowhere to be found on the device.

3. Technical support is absolutely horrid. They've outsourced to somewhere that doesn't speak English, understand their products, or understand customer service. I called to inquire about the above issues. Two of the three times that I called, I couldn't even hear the representative because of what sounded like a very loud fan in the background. The third time, the representative had no knowledge of the product. In fact, when you go through the phone tree, there isn't even an option for this device, so you just have to select something else and pray that you reach the right area.

I ultimately got my question answered by calling sales and asking to be transferred to a level 3 support technician - they're in the U.S.

4. When accessing the network share on the DNS-323 from a Windows based machine, you must be logged in to your machine using the username that you entered on the DNS-323, because the "user name" field will be greyed out and cannot be changed when you attempt to access the files. This creates problems if you have different usernames on each computer because you must now set-up the system. Other NAS devices (Synology, Buffalo, Linksys) don't behave this way, instead letting you change the username and the password when you login. There is a workaround, involving mapping a network drive and selecting the option to login as a different user, but I have too many folders setup to map every single one to a network drive.

5. The password length must be between 5 and 8 characters. Because you must set the username and password on your Windows machine to match exactly with the DNS-323 (see above), you now must make sure your password on your computer is also between 5 and 8 characters. Most other NAS devices don't have this limitation.

6. Each time you set-up a user permission to access a directory, the system creates a new, different share name. For instance, suppose that I have a directory called "Test." I choose to allow a user named "John" to access "Test" with read-write permissions. The DNS-323 will create a share named "Test" which John can access. Suppose that I then allow a user named "Mike" to access "Test" with read-write access. The system will create a separate share named "Test-1" which Mike can access. Mike will not be able to access the share named "Test" and John cannot access "Test-1." With multiple users, this could be a serious nuisance. Other NAS devices (Synology, Buffalo, Linksys) don't behave this way, instead letting every user simply access "Test."

8. The scheduled backup feature does not work properly. I set it up to backup all the files from an older Linksys NAS device. It got about half-way done and then stopped for no apparent reason. To make matters worse, when I attempted to delete the files that it did copy, it gave me an error claiming that the files were read only. Apparently, it set some kind of read only flag on all the files that it copied. I tried changing the flag, but it wouldn't let me do that either. Yet, I have read/write permissions for the folders and I can change the file names. I just can't delete them.

It's a new product, and surely firmware updates will make it more stable as time goes on. Now on v1.02. But overall, I've had a great time with this, and few problems other than the normal Windows network browsing issues.

I am now running backups from three systems to this NAS without any issues (Mac, Linux, and XP). The speed is very good on gigabit ethernet.

Power management works well - the disks spin down after 5 minutes of inactivity, and it's more economical than running a full-blown PC to share data.

Using the Western Digital 400GB disks on the compatibility list.

**** Updated Review 5/14/07 *****
I received a new unit from Amazon (fairly quickly I might add), and everything is up and working. It was indeed a bad unit. The unit has been working non-stop for 5+ months now and no complaint. I've even upgraded the firmware once to fix the RAID performance on it and it didn't even require me to wipe my data. It seems the new firmware revs are getting better and better. I would highly recommend this now after having it up and running for so long.

I'm giving it 4 STARS because the interface is still slightly buggy, not all the extra features work as expected, and the performance is not always as quick as possible. At times (regardless of computer or network activity) it is quicker than other times. I'm still using the same Seagate drives listed below. I plan to eventually get this running on gigE and that would probably solve some of my performance issues.

************************************
Well I bought one of these devices and put in two Seagate 200GB hard drives (ST3200820AS) and it went right up and started running. Upgraded to the new firmware 1.2 and this ran fine for 10 days. I went on a trip and when I came back it had locked up. It wouldn't even power down by holding the power button as instructed. The only thing I could do was ping the device, but i could not access any of my folders. Did a hard restart and then it never came up again. It would act like it was going to during the power on portion, but as soon as it was time to access the hard drives, the NAS would shut itself down abruptly. I finally got it going by pulling one of the drives out,then it would start fine. I had it on RAID 1 (mirroring) and EXT3. I then proceeded to do a whole bunch of things including downgrading the firmware but it would just not work at all. It's going back but I'm trying to get another just in case this was a bad apple. Will update this later, but for now it gets 2 stars.

I currently have this working with a 400GB Samsung Spinpoint drive. It shows fast transfers (see tests against other NASs at tomshardware site), near silent operation, and is relatively cheap. The problem with transfers of directories with large number of files has been fixed in firmware 1.02 (available 12/18). I tested it today with a 8,000 file directory which had previously not copied fully, it now copies to the dns323 perfectly. The spinpoint drives are great companions to this NAS, I just ordered 2 500gb drives to install in the dns323 to create a terabyte NAS. Spinpoints aren't on dlink's list of drives tested to work with the dns323, but the 400GB at least works great with it.
Edit 12/30/2006: Other reviewers have found that updating to firmware 1.02 doesn't resolve problems if you chose the ext3 file system. If you choose ext2 fs and firmware 1.02, hopefully you will have the same experience as I have had: a great problem-free NAS.

I bought one and went ahead and bought another.

Setup was incredibly easy. Plug SATA drives in, update firmware, get IP address, start copying over files.

This NAS works great on my mix network of Mac desktops and laptops -- both wired and wireless. The iTunes server works great (only drawback being the lack of playlist creation and manual refresh of the listing when adding new music), and with an Apple AirPort Express with Air Tunes (M9470LL/A), you can just pipe your NAS stored Music right to your living room.

Be aware that on initial connection it does take a few seconds for your hard drives to spin up (I have mine set up as a RAID 1 so I have to wait for two hard drives to spin up).

When looking for a NAS drive for my home network, simplicity and redundancy were my primary needs. The D-Link DNS-323 2-Bay Network Storage Enclosure is the perfect solution. Although the drive comes with many features and abilities, RAID 1 mirroring (same data is written to both drives for data backup) was the big selling point for me. I have been using a Buffalo LinkStation for the past couple of years, but I have been afraid of a drive failure and so I backed it up on an external USB drive once a month, which was becoming quite a chore. I wanted a new solution that would relieve this manual task once and for all.

I read many reviews about the D-Link DNS-323 and found mostly good things were being said about the enclosure. I decided to give this model a try and I am extremely happy that I did. The enclosure is very impressive looking and feeling. It is constructed of a very solid, brushed aluminum, instead of plastic like many other enclosures are made of. Installation and setup couldn't be much easier, except the software that D-Link provides for this purpose could be a little confusing for non-technically minded folks. I purchased two SATA server drives (7200 RPM), with 16 MB buffers and rated for 1.2 million hours MTBF. They are high duty cycle drives with a 5 year warranty. I want to make sure that these drives will be doing their job for many years to come. I then setup my DNS-323 drive enclosure for a RAID 1 configuration. This means that any data I write to drive 1 is automatically backed up on drive 2. The RAID setup process is very straight forward, using the D-Link CD provided. I have a Gigabit home network so the data transfer rates to and from this NAS are fast. I backed up roughly 210 GB of data from my old Buffalo LinkStation (which also has a Gigabit interface) in just over three hours. This may seem like a lot of time but it was a lot a data, including some very large AVI files. Now that all of my network shared data is on the new D-Link NAS, I am extremely pleased with the data transfer rate of this system. I think the key is to pair good high performance drives with this enclosure. Adding older, slower drives would certainly hurt performance of an otherwise outstanding device.

The DNS-323 packs some great features, for those who wish to do more with this enclosure than I do. It has a built in USB print server, a built-in FTP file server (for file access over the Internet), UPnP AV Server for Streaming Music, Photos, and Video to Compatible Media Players, built-in iTunes music server capabilities, and the drive(s) can be setup for file share restrictions; allowing specific folder access, data size limitations, etc. The enclosure allows you to customize your drive configurations; including standard, JBOD (linear), RAID 0 and RAID 1. The power management features are great as well, allowing you to set the drives to spin down when not accessed for a specific period of time. I have mine set to spin down the drives after 20 minutes of inactivity. The drives spin back up automatically as soon as someone on the network tries to access the NAS data. You can setup a large number of user groups/accounts and can customize the access rights of any of these users. Quite an impressive array of features for such a low cost NAS enclosure.

No tools are required to setup your DNS-323 storage enclosure. The front cover lifts right off, revealing the two SATA hard drive slots. You simply push your hard drive(s) into the empty slots and replace the front cover. Plug in the included power adapter and plug the NAS into your network using the included blue Ethernet cable, or a CAT 6 (CAT 5 is sufficient if you are only using 10 or 100 Mbps) cable of your own. To release the drives from the enclosure you lift the front cover off, to expose the drives, and lift up on the appropriate drive release lever on the back of the DNS-323. The drive pops loose and you simply slide it out. It's that simple! You pop in the included CD, which guides you through a fairly simple setup process for the enclosure. It will also assist you in mapping the new drive(s) to your computer(s). The setup utility runs directly from the CD-ROM, so there is no software that needs to be installed on each client computer on your network.

You honestly can't beat the simplicity, feature packed, quality built D-Link DNS-323. I got mine for under $200.00. Be prepared to spend more on your hard drives than you do on the drive enclosure itself. Of course you can use some spare SATA drives that you may have laying around the house of office, but I highly recommend buying some new, high performance drives for this great NAS device. I couldn't be happier with my new D-Link NAS drive system, and I highly recommend this device for anyone looking for a simple, secure, feature packed data sharing system for their home or small office network. I am planning to play around with the iTunes and FTP server features in the future, but for now we just use this NAS to store Outlook PST data, pictures, MP3 files, AVI files, Word and Excel files, and some shared databases. It was the perfect solution for our home, and now I don't have to worry about drive failure since all of the data is written to both drives in the enclosure. I'm usually not much of a D-Link fan, but the D-Link DNS-323 2-bay network storage enclosure is a top notch product!

One of the few of these type of items available on the market. I bought it with great trepidation after reading all the reviews. I had received some free drives from Newegg (Seagate) and needed to house them. This was a no brainer set up. The utility found it immediately without me having to mess around with turning virus protection or firewalls off. (XP pro SP2). The firmware was one rev prior so I updated it - absolutely smooth as silk. Reformatted the drives. I chose the RAID 1 option and ext3 format. I like the fact that you can specify RAID size and the leftover is formatted as striped volume. The drive is fairly solid. The fan is not very noisy. The front slide up access door is a little kludgy. Good user interface. I was also surprised with the speed of transfer especially having chosen RAID and ext3. The only thing I can never get to work and it is 100% MY lack of knowledge is the email alerts. I couldn't get Infrant to do it and same with this one.

As an aside I love Amazon and NewEgg. Great retailers both of them.

The first thing I did was install the 1.03 firmware.
Then did a RAID 1 format on a couple 500GB Seagate drives.
Immediately after, I mapped the DNS323 as a network drive on a Vista and XP machine, very easy.

I then commenced to copy around 50GB of backup files from those two different computers to the DNS323 simultaneously over Gbit network. No problem.

The overall speed speed seems very close to the speed of a standard PC with Gb Network interface.

OBTW, I did not need to install a single piece of software, nor did I need to do the search for the DNS's IP address with the "search cd"

The DNS323's IP address showed up instantly in my router's lan device table.