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[bigclaw]

I want to avoid sounding like a broken record, but the DNS-323 formatted the wrong drive!

firmware: 1.06
configuration: Standard
right bay: existing drive (volume_1)
left bay: new drive (new from factory)

Granted both drives are of the same model, but this is the simplest configuration I can imagine, and what kind of poorly written code is in this device that can possibly format the wrong drive!

All essential data is backed up but it's going to take hours to restore.

[bigclaw]

Now that the "wrong" format has finished, the second "new" drive shows up as "pink". Great.

[hilaireg]

Feel your pain ...

On some RAID-based system that I work with, the RAID logic blinks (flashes) the HDD that will be formatted.  Would be nice to see which HDD the Format will occur on in a similar fashion - this way at least, one would have a visual queue.

*hint* *hint* *hint* *hint* *hint*

[bigclaw]

Well, the web page prompted me with the correct serial number to format. What else could I expect to happen? I could have taken the first drive out before formatting the second one, but given the fragile nature of the firmware, who knows what will happen then?

I understand that software has bugs. Heck I have personally introduced my fair share of them. However, for the sixth incarnation of NAS firmware to format the wrong drive in a typical use case, it's simply beyond belief.

[hilaireg]

Agreed; IMHO, disk management functions should be the primary focus of D-Link Engineering - the rest of the features are just noise (or bling).

... and it would be nice to see some form of blinking light pattern to confirm that the Web GUI isn't lying 

[Abysal]

Well my confidence is not there with this device. Before every firmware upgrade I backup ~600 GB of data to multiple server drives.

I see a lot of people talking about doing backups of the DNS-323 RAID1 daily or on a regular basis, while I do not dispute that backups are a good idea, I feel that a RAID1 setup lessens that to a degree. Otherwise I might as well not even bother with RAID1 and just rely on daily backups of my single NAS disk or spanned disk.

I know backups are a must on any system RAID1 or not...

[fordem]

I see a lot of people talking about doing backups of the DNS-323 RAID1 daily or on a regular basis, while I do not dispute that backups are a good idea, I feel that a RAID1 setup lessens that to a degree. Otherwise I might as well not even bother with RAID1 and just rely on daily backups of my single NAS disk or spanned disk.

I know backups are a must on any system RAID1 or not...

You're obviously missing the intent of RAID1 - which, like my signature says is disk redundancy.  What redundant disks allow is the uninterrupted processing of data in the event of a disk failure.

If you have a single disk and your data is stored on that single disk and backed up elsewhere and that disk fails you are no longer able to work with that data until such time as the disk is replaced and the data restored - if you were using a disk to disk backup, you may be able to continue working by accessing the data from it's backup location, assuming that your backup software stores the data in a usable format - not all of them do.

If you were running mirrored disks (RAID1) and your data was stored on that array, failure of either disk could occur with no interruption to your work.

The reason why backups are a MUST even in a RAID1 environment, is that RAID1 only protects you from failure of a single disk - you can have failures of both disks (simultaneously or before the first disk is replaced), virus, accidental or intentional deletion of files - these are just a few of the things that can cause loss of data - and if they occur with a RAID1 system and you have no backup, you will lose data.

It's up to you to determine what your needs are - if uninterrupted access to your data is your first priority then you're not going to get that without redundancy, how much of a priority you place on it, will determine how much redundancy you buy - RAID1 is the only the first step.  On the other hand, if you can tolerate some amount of down time then by all means don't bother with RAID.