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[Gavin]

I will have a D-Link ShareCenter Pulse arriving tomorrow, for which I will put 2x 1TB drives (one with existing data) into it and replace my samba server.

I have some questions that are not answered by the literature on the D-Link website and if anyone has any experience with these scenarios, I would greatly appreciate your input.

If I put in a 1TB drive that is formatted to ext3 and contains 700GB of data, will the ShareCenter try and format this drive before I can use it?

I would ideally like to put the drive containing the existing data in bay 1 and then in bay 2, place an empty 1TB drive and set up Raid 1 mirroring. Again, will this destroy my original drive?

Is it possible to share folders on a drive using a "per-folder" basis? The manual makes it appear like you can basically only share an entire drive as RW/R/No Access. I would like to share individual folders between individual users, is that possible? In addition, have RW for one user on a given folder but every other user would have only R.

Thank you!

[JavaLawyer]

If you haven't done so, you can test drive an emulator of the DNS-320 web interface here:  http://support.dlink.com/emulators/dns320/200/login.html. The DNS-320 supports sharing at folder level. As far as your existing HDD is concerned, if your HDD formatting is incompatible with the DNS-320, the unit "should" ask you to format the drive before performing any action. I use the word "should" because I've heard users report exceptions to this.

In any event, you should always maintain a physical backup of your data in general, and definitely prior to any data migration activity.

[Gavin]

Thank you for your reply but I must say that this device has me nervous...

[Jack Ryan]

Gavin,

If your 700GB of data is not important (unlikely) I would just try it and see what happens. Otherwise, set the NAS up with one new drive and leave the drive containing data in your Samba server (Linux?). Then use the NAS local backup application to copy the data from the server to the NAS; this is faster than copying via a PC.

Once you have done that you can add a second drive to the NAS. Drives are quite cheap and I think I would get another new one rather than use the original data drive - keep that as a backup until you are happy with the new configuration (and have made more backups).

Jack

[JavaLawyer]

Agreed. You should always maintain a physical backup of your data.

Again, the DNS-320 should ask whether you would like to format or not. Since the DNS series does in fact proactively asks what to do with a new drive (i.e. there are several options available) I presume that the reported cases of "automatic formatting" are due to user error (i.e. pressing the wrong button).

[Gavin]

That is a bit reassuring. I will investigate tomorrow morning with some dummy 145GB drives I have lying around.

Thank you for your help!

[JavaLawyer]

Glad I could help.

[Gavin]

One follow up question. What is the expected Raid 1 rebuild time for a 1TB drive?

[JavaLawyer]

Can't help you with that question, you'll need to ask someone who performed a rebuild on the DNS-320.

[Doctor Doom]

It depends on many many factors. 1 TB drive may only have 50 gigs on it or be completely full. The other factor is if someone is accessing the volume during the rebuild process.

It can take anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours. The rebuild process should only be executed when a drive failure actually occurs and you went to your local computer store to pick up a replacement drive. It is not a "weekly backup" option. Very unsafe and would be much easier and faster to schedule backups from NAS to HD or NAS to NAS etc. Plus you have the added bonus of having the data on two seperate units rather than one if it were to die.

Also if/when you need to actually do a RAID rebuild, it's best to ensure no one is trying to access the volume. It will just slow the whole process.

[JavaLawyer]

Also if/when you need to actually do a RAID rebuild, it's best to ensure no one is trying to access the volume. It will just slow the whole process.

If at all possible, I recommend avoiding any access to a RAID undergoing a rebuild. Although the risk is minimal, there's no sense in performing any actions that could impact data and RAID integrity.

[petehiggins]

Gavin,

See my post (Pete Higgins) just before yours. Prior to getting my DNS-320 I formatted my two 1.5 TB Seagate drives with one large ext3 partition on each. The DNS-320 couldn't use them.

After it formatted the drives I had three partitions on each drive:
linux-swap 517.69 MiB
ext3 500.04 MiB (contains DNS-320 folders for ajaxplorer, ftp and AppleDB etc.)
ext3 1.36 TiB (where all my data is stored)

I expect you will have to let it re-format your drives for them to work, then transfer your data over the network.

Pete