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[dolftb]

I have 3 Seagate's 1.5 TB .  I use raid 1.  Every once in a while I would pull out a drive and replace it in the DNS-323 with the third drive. This way I would always have a backup which I store elsewhere in a safe place and readable with A linux driver in windows 7.

This used to work fine, but Now I am on Firmaware 1.10 beta and have noticed that seemingly because one drive is 1499mb (how can this be ?) and the other is 1500mb , I now get and extra volume I dont want.

I believe because of this extra volume  and (subsiquent) partition(s) I cannot access the volume _1 partition with any of the drives physically connected to a windows 7 machine. I have tried 4-5 different linux drivers without success. Many of these drivers either dont see any linux partitions or may see them and be able to read the first partition, but this is never the volume_1  partition of course ( because that would be to easy , grrrrr ).

Do I really need to flash back to V. 07. If I remember correctly the formating would not automatically include a JBOD volume.  Or does anybody have any other Ideas or preferably know of any windows 7 software that can actually read ALL the partitions.

I have tried:

Ext2IFS
Ext2FSD
Ext2Explore
Explore2FS
Linux_Reader

Any help would be welcome thanks.

[JavaLawyer]

The DNS-323 is not designed to intermittently swap-out HDDs in a RAID array. Although your system is (or was) working, in the long term this strategy is likely to cause issues (as you are currently experiencing). If your approach is to maintain a separate physical copy of your data, why not push data to an external USB storage device?

[dosborne]

The beta firmware uses a different drive format which likely resulted in the small variance due to different physical architecture of the drives. If they are truely identical, then a reformat should and rebuild of all drives should resolve it. As mentioned, this is not a good solution for what you want to accomplish. A better and safer option would be to attach the USB enclosure and drive to the USB port and run FFP, although it is a 'hack' so to speak.

[dolftb]

Thanks both of you for your input, I fully understand the risk involved by occasionally pulling a drive, and keeping it as a backup. I choose this method because its easy and I would have a max of 3 copies and min of 1 in case the whole unit + 2 drives would explode etc.

I have felt comfortable with this method. However my question remains,  does anyone know any software which can read all the partitions created by the DNS-323 or how to eliminate the JBOD volume_2 while formatting for raid 1 ?

Thanks

[dolftb]

Thanks both of you for your input, I fully understand the risk involved by occasionally pulling a drive, and keeping it as a backup. I choose this method because its easy and I would have a max of 3 copies and min of 1 in case the whole unit + 2 drives would explode etc.

I have felt comfortable with this method. However my question remains,  does anyone know any software which can read all the partitions created by the DNS-323 or how to eliminate the JBOD volume_2 while formatting for raid 1 ?

Thanks

[JavaLawyer]

Here's a thread describing a software application, "R-Studio", used by a DNS-323 owner to virtually mount their RAID array: http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=12833.0.

I have no personal experience with this software.

[dolftb]

Thanks JAvaLawyer I will check it out. I will also try a flashback to 1.09 firmware and repartition.

[JavaLawyer]

Glad to help. Please post your results.

[dolftb]

Okay first off I found : http://www.runtime.org/captain-nemo.htm  (v.5.03) @JavaLawyer : you sent me to the right developer ! Thanks . This software reads ALL of the partitions I was not able to read with ANY other sofware I tried.YAAAYY !

I Flashed back to DNS 323 V1.09 then tried to reformat and again firmware does want to create a JBOD partition/Volume 2.  Then I went back to V1.08  and then It doesnot talk about creating a JBOD volume with any "leftover" space. Hummm...

Ultimately I Used win7 to delete ALL partitions on all drives,  re-flashed to 1.10 of course factory reset, and reformated to raid 1 EXT/2 . This time, when I added all possible disk space of 1498mb the firmware did not leave anything for a (2gig  or so ?) JBOD volume_2.  However, there are still multiple partitions when all is said and done. This seems to be making it hard for almost all linux reading software to access the main data partition.  "CAPTAIN NEMO PRO" works great !

Thanks again !

[JavaLawyer]

I'm glad everything worked out for you. And thank you for sharing your results with everyone.