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[Verminator]

I know the issue of using 4K/Advanced Format Drives for the DNS-434 has yet to be resolved by a third party with a custom firmware, but with the release of firmware 1.05 can a 2TB Advance Formate Drive (such as the WD EARS) or even the current EZRX) be used, so long as it's 2TB or under?

Any advice on this would be appreciated.  If we are limited to 8TB total for the 343, it would be nice to at least be able to put a modern 2TB drive in it.  Anyone have any experience in doing this?  Also, for what it's worth I'm not looking to RAID it...just a JBOD or single drives at best.

[JavaLawyer]

I can say with relative certainty that the simpler the configuration (i.e. sticking with Standard Configuration), the greater the likelihood newer HDDs will work. Thus far i have not personally had to replace any of the 8 legacy HDDs in my two DNS-343s.

I am in the same position as you in that I would like to know what modern HDDs are compatible as potential spares.

[JavaLawyer]

You may want to keep an eye on this thread: Easy Success with Seagate 2TB Drives FW 1.08

A member successfully installed a modern 2TB HDD (model No. included in post) in a DNS-323. The DNS-323 and DNS-343 are of the same generation, use a similar filesystem, and are almost identical except for the number of HDD bays and other functionality. No guarantees here, but this looks like good news. The post is only a day old, so the info isn't dated.

[Schtuperman]

When I first purchased my DNS-343 I ordered four 2TB WD20EARS drive mechanisms.  I should have done my homework before ordering the drives, as I didn't realize AFT would be a problem.      These were the Green units with AFT.  At the time I was running FW 1.03 (or below) and I was only able to use these drives in Standard mode with separate volumes.  All attempts to setup RAID 5 or JBOD resulted in data loss.   A few weeks later I ordered 4 WD 2TB Black drive mechanisms and these drives worked fine.  One is beginning to fail and, with so many hours of runtime, I decided to replace all of them. 

This morning I will be receiving 4 new Western Digital 2TB drives to be configured in RAID 5 mode.  The replacement drives are WD's Red NAS units (WD20EFRX).  Over the next day or two I'll be restoring the data and will post back the results.

[JavaLawyer]

When I first purchased my DNS-343 I ordered four 2TB WD20EARS drive mechanisms.  I should have done my homework before ordering the drives, as I didn't realize ADF would be a problem.      These were the Green units with ADF.  At the time I was running FW 1.03 (or below) and I was only able to use these drives in Standard mode with separate volumes.  All attempts to setup RAID 5 resulted in data loss.   A few weeks later I ordered 4 WD 2TB Black drive mechanisms and these drives and worked fine.  One is beginning to fail and, with so many hours of runtime, I decided to replace all of them. 

This morning I will be receiving 4 new Western Digital 2TB drives to be configured in RAID 5 mode.  The replacement drives are WD's Red NAS units (WD20EFRX).  Over the next day or two I'll be restoring the data and will post back the results.

Please post your experience with the WD20EFRX once you've installed and had a chance to burn them in! There are a lot of eager DNS-343 owners seeking stable replacements for their legacy non-ADF HDDs.

[Schtuperman]

Progress Report:  I installed the four new Western Digital Red 2TB WD20EFRX drives late yesterday afternoon.  The drives were manufactured just this month and included the latest WD NASWare 3.0 firmware.  The DNS-343 is running FW 1.05 (Official).  I configured the full capacity of the new drives as RAID 5/EXT3.  Initialization & formatting went fine. 

Prior to the drive upgrade I had pulled an old PIII-1000 desktop box out of the garage to back up & restore 2.2TB of data to a 4TB WD USB drive.  The old computer is limited by a 100MB NIC & USB 2.0.  This limits my restoration speed to ~10MB/s.  As I write this, approximately 440GB has been restored to the new drives.  Periodically I have been testing the restored data by streaming videos & music, opening a file here and there, and running the installers from a few apps.  So far everything is working perfectly without a single hitch.  I will report back again when the restoration has completed.

One thing I have noticed is the DNS-343 is running significantly cooler with the new RED drives than with the older BLACK mechanisms.  With the Blacks installed the DNS-343 typically ran between 114-118 degrees even when the drives were sleeping.  The REDs have been actively running for 12+ hours and the DNS-343 reports 109-111 degrees.

[Verminator]

Wow!!  Thanks for your updates.  Although this is encouraging so far I suspect you may run into problems shortly...but maybe not.  I'm curious if the WD Blacks you put in were the newer Advanced Format ones or if they were the non- Advanced Format ones?  It's odd the blacks worked for you but not the greens! Unless the blacks were the older non-Advanced Format drives.  I seem to recall from several years ago when people started putting Advanced Format drives in the 2-bay DNS-323's that they seemed to work on lower mode settings like single disks or JOBD but had issues in a RAID format especially as the drives filled up. So will be very interested how you find things are as you start getting more data on them.  Also, I wonder if larger drives that are bigger than 2TB would perform the same or if the firmware simply won't support drives beyond 2TB. Please keep us posted.  I have an empty 343 on the shelf just dying to be used again. 

[Schtuperman]

Verminator you are correct my Blacks were the non-AFT models.  The Greens were AFT and they would only work in Standard Single-Disk mode.  RAID or JBOD modes would NOT work with the greens.

My DNS-343 has been running FW 1.03 until just a few days ago when I noticed a drive beginning to fail and upgraded to FW 1.05 (official).  Things were working so I hadn't looked for an update in ages.  The WD Reds are specifically designed for NAS applications.  I thought I read that one of the things corrected in FW 1.05 was the ability to work with AFT drives?

I do not believe the DNS-343 supports drives >2TB, regardless of AFT.

477GB restored...keeping my fingers crossed.

[Schtuperman]

I finally grew weary of watching the brutally slow transfer speeds (~7.5 MBps) and moved things over to a Core i7 box with USB 3.0 & gigabit ethernet.  The file restoration completed yesterday morning.  Since then I have run Scandisk from the DNS-343 interface and tested thousands of files.  The last folders to copy over were my Music, Photos, and Video folders containing tens of thousands of photos, videos, and mp3s.  I have ran at least 30 installers, opened hundreds of videos & songs, and had a slide show of pictures going since yesterday.  Zero errors....all files opened successfully and Scandisk reports no issues.  In fact, I have not experienced even a single hiccup!   

At this time I have to conclude that, using FW 1.05 (Official) with a RAID 5/EXT3 configuration, Western Digital RED 2TB WD20EFRX drives appear to function perfectly in the DNS-343.

[JavaLawyer]

Great news, thanks!

[ouija]

Hey, just wanted to post my feedback and experience with 2TB ADF drives and the DLINK DNS-343 after one of my drives bit the dust last week.

Originally, I had four 2TB Seagate Barracuda LP drives (ST32000542AS) which were configured as a JBOD array;  Now that one of them has failed, I decided it best to reconfigure the unit using a RAID-5 array with the new replacement.

Originally, I tried replacing and building the array using a new 2TB Seagate Desktop HDD (ST2000DM001) since it was the closest available drive to me, but after re-configuring the drives into a RAID-5 array, and having the format saying it was successful, the DNS-343 would state that the RAID-5 array was degraded after the initial reboot following the re-configuration, and after spending days trying to rebuild the array.

Then I realized that this replacement drive was running at 7200rpm vs 5900rpm of 3 remaining original drives I had in the array as well, so I returned this drive and picked up a 2TB Seagate NAS HDD (ST2000VN000), which runs at 5900rpm and should do the trick, right?  Negative.  Same issue, formats successfully but always reports that the RAID is degraded.

Finally I stumbled across this thread and read about the issues with ADF and the DNS-343.  Even though firmware 1.05 states there is support for ADF, apparently it is dependant on the drive being used, as the Seagate ST2000VN000 should technically be supported but did not work in my DNS-343 running 1.05.

So, I took this drive back and picked up a 2TB WD RED NAS HDD (WD20EFRX) as recommended by Schtuperman, and opted to fully reset the DNS-343 configuration back to default/factory settings before rebooting the unit and re-configuring the array.

The format completed successfully (although the web interface got stuck on "Initializing 0%") but the OLED display was showing the formatting progress up until it read "100% done", and then I had to physically hold down the power button to power off and reboot the DNS-343 since I could not access the web interface at all as it was literally frozen on the "Initializing 0%" screen so I closed the browser window and kept getting connection timeout errors when trying to access it again via the IP). 

However, I'm happy to report that once it booted up again, the RAID-5 array no longer reported back as 'Degraded' and had completed the configuration/format/sync successfully, and no more errors running the S.M.A.R.T. test on any of the drives!  Again, note that I am now running three older Seagate ST32000542AS drives with one WD RED WD20EFRX in a RAID-5 configuration without any issues!

Thanks to Schtuperman for his comments which greatly helped me get my unit back up and functional with a working RAID-5 configuration!

[JavaLawyer]

@ouija -- thanks for the detailed walk-through of your experience. At this stage in the DNS-343's life, I personally would stick with formatting the unit using a Standard Configuration, especially in lieu of the new HDD technologies and jury rigging required to get a RAID array up and running -- not a game I am willing to play with stored/critical data.  I love my two DNS-343 and will continue using them as long as they keep chugging away. I also have two DNS-345, which have a much higher capacity and higher throughput, but there's something about the simplicity of the DNS-343's design and UI that I miss in the newer models.