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The Graveyard - Products No Longer Supported => D-Link Storage => DNS-323 => Topic started by: Keboose on March 05, 2011, 10:57:20 AM

Title: What drive format will allow me to connect the drives to my laptop?
Post by: Keboose on March 05, 2011, 10:57:20 AM

My DNS-323 has two 1Tb hard drives in it, set up as a RAID. I have a PC backup and recovery program that I am very fond of. The only problem is that I can back up my computer over a network, but I cannot restore my PC the same way, I have to take out one of the drives and plug it into my Windows 7 laptop using a SATA to USB adapter. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000YJBL78) This is a problem because my computer could not read the drive until I formatted it, using the disk manager. It had 3 partitions with unknown formats, and about 1.5Gb of unallocated space. It wouldn't be read until I deleted all the partitions, turned the unallocated space (now the whole terabyte) into one NTFS partition, and assigned it a drive letter.

It's not a major issue at the moment, because I was just testing the restore process. But what formatting options on the DNS-323 will give me the NTFS Partitions I need so that I can plug a drive into my laptop when I really need to?

Thanks for your time.

Title: Re: What drive format will allow me to connect the drives to my laptop?
Post by: dosborne on March 05, 2011, 12:42:41 PM

The DNS323 (along with 99% of devices with an embedded O/S) uses Linux as its operating system and the drives are formatted in EXT2 or EXT3. These cannot be accessed natively from a Windows system. One option is to download a linux driver and install the drive in the PC or put it into an USB enclosure in order to read it.

Another is to get a backup program that runs from a floppy or bootable CD in order to be able to mount the network drive and access the image that way.

If you search the forum, you will find a link to the windows driver.

Absolute worst case, you should be able to reinstall a fresh copy of windows should you need to, then install your backup software, mount a share and access the image that way in order to recover.

Title: Re: What drive format will allow me to connect the drives to my laptop?
Post by: Keboose on March 05, 2011, 03:46:04 PM

Thanks, I forgot that the 323 ran Linux. I went to google and found the driver website, (http://www.fs-driver.org/index.html) and it installed without a hitch after I ran it in compatibility mode for Windows Vista, and now I can mount the second drive, no problem. I'll have to remake my recovery CD (which is what I was using in the first place,) and include this program on it.

Thanks for the help!