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[Awaken88]

Hey All,

Did quite a bit of reading about different NAS and HDDs etc and decided to go with this DNS-320.

So looked at the supported HDD's and bought 2 x 2TB WD Green's.

Put them in first time, loaded up the CD and tried to format on the PC..

Get error message, so I google and see that I can do it from the web browser, okay not happy that I need to find a work around but at least that worked...

Put it as Raid 0 thinking that would be the best option...

Start transfering data from my computer, transferring between 2-4mB/s when connected via a Cat5e cable.... Not happy.

So start to look around and try and work out what the problem might be, my computer transfers find to my other laptop at a much greater speed so must be the NAS.

Thought maybe the configuration was an issue or problem with the HDDs.

Then my transfers keep hanging, it takes ages to load each time I open a new folder via explorer (Like I'm browsing an ftp directory from the web would take to load)

Then transfers failed... really not impressed with this device so far.

So I thought okay, well lets format the hdd start fresh with a different configuration and see how that goes.

Book up the web UI as I know the cd doesn't work.

Try clicking the 'Set RAID type and re-format' but it does nothing, thought it was just taking awhile to load but there is no movement at all..

So I boot up the CD, figured maybe if i can make a failed format then it will recognize them as new drives and format them from the Web UI.

As predicted the format failed at 66%

Go back to the web UI and now that option is grayed out...

So I'm stuck with 4TB of non-working hdds and a pos NAS that doesn't want to work.

I only have laptops at home which was the entire need for a NAS instead of buying a computer for storage and I can tell you I'm not very pleased.

If anyone has any ideas on the best way for me to attack this otherwise I'm going to have to return them to the shop.

Thanks!

[Teaser]

Try putting one drive in and format that as standard first, then put the next drive in and set them as RAID 0...

Also might be worth updating the firmware if you haven't done so already... (I'm not sure what firmware the 320 ships with these days, but the pre 2.0 firmwares were terrible!)

[Awaken88]

I've got the latest firmware, even then upgraded to the BETA firmware and still no luck.

The problem is it has the format part grayed out? Which is very annoying.

About to bin it shortly.

[RicRoller]

The problem is it has the format part grayed out?

ISTR recent firmware has a bug that won't let you reformat the drives if they are already formatted by an unrecognised (or in your case corrupted?) file system.

But you should be able to recover by wiping the disks (take them out of the DNS-320 and connect to a PC using a hard drive dock or caddy - then use a disk utility to wipe them). Then put the completely blank disks back into the DNS-320 and it should see them as new disks and once again give you the opportunity for formatting them...


FWIW For disk wiping I usually use the "Erase disk" tool in the free "Parted Magic" bootable CD - just be very careful that you choose the correct disk to wipe (or first disconnect any that have valuable data on so Parted Magic can't see them)!

A complete wipe of a 3TB disk will take around 5 to 6 hours. If you have two docks/caddies, Parted Magic can do both disks together.


Regards,
Richard

[Teaser]

A complete wipe of a 3TB disk will take around 5 to 6 hours. If you have two docks/caddies, Parted Magic can do both disks together.

Just open gparted, select the drive you want to wipe (and make bloody sure you've picked the right one!!!) then go to device > create partition table. Should take less than a minute!

If you're keeping the drive for your own use, it's absolutely pointless wasting your time with a thorough wipe...

[RicRoller]

Just open gparted, select the drive you want to wipe (and make bloody sure you've picked the right one!!!) then go to device > create partition table. Should take less than a minute!

Not knowing how the DNS-320 determines that a disk is (or might be) already formatted and how the known bug in the current firmware behaves, I was not sure that just wiping the partition table woiuld be sufficient for the DNS-320 to see the disk as being "blank" - that is why I offered the slow-but-certain option of a full-erase.

But you're right; it's certainly worth first trying the "quick" method of just wiping the partition information - even the Windows "Disk Management" tool could probably manage to do that if you didn't have Parted Magic or any other third party disk tools to hand...

Regards,
Richard