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[wbhood]

I formatted a 1.5 TB drive as a single. I later installed a 1.5TB in the second bay and wanted to configure them both as a Raid 1 Mirror. I don't care about re-formatting data so I just selected the "reformat as Raid1 option.  The response is

"Available capacity for RAID 1 volume: -1GB"

Enter the desired capacity of the RAID 1 volume:

I hope someone can help me set this up as a Raid 1 Mirror. 

Thanks...

[ECF]

Are you running the latest 1.03 firmware?

[wbhood]

I just installed the 1.3 firmware.  I saw the choice where I select "reconfigure to Raid 1". I then select: Enable auto rebuild radio button.  After 4% of formatting I get "Hard Drive(s) Formatting Failure (Error Code: 112).  -Restart-

I have tried both choices since I do not care about the data on any of the drives since everything is new.

[ECF]

Try formatting them as standard then do it in RAID1 from there.

[wbhood]

A week ago I formatted the first drive as a stand-alone using ver 1.0 - the formatting went ok and I did notice that it was NTFS format.  I just removed both drives from the dlink and put the new drive in the left bay where the first one was. I selected to format the drive (RAID was not an option) - The next was a selection that I did not see before... a choice between EXT 2 and EXT 3 - what is that and what should I select?  Is this a new format and do both drives have to be formatted to this new (and same) choice?  Can these formats be accessed in Windows? I thought I remembered a link that said something about Lunix.

[ECF]

No it will be formated in ext2 or ext3 a linux format.

[JoeSchmuck]

wbhood:
  Not sure what you are talking about when you reference NTFS unless you are stating you installed the drive in a computer, not the NAS.  The NAS can only format a drive to EXT2 or EXT3, a unix format.  Yes, the format can be read by a windoze machine via the NAS and there are other means if you desired to connect it directly to a windoze machine.

Yes, both drive need to be formatted the same if you select RAID 1 (mirroring both drives).
EXT2 is a little over 25% faster for this NAS, because the NAS processor is slow, not because the format is better.  Actually EXT2 is less tolerant of a fault.
EXT3 has someting call journeling which is basically a safety net and corrects for errors.  And of course, it's slower, again only due to the way this NAS operates.

If your data is very important I'd choose EXT3.  If you place your NAS on a good long lasting UPS, choose EXT2.  I was running EXT3 for a while but once I got a dedicated UPS that will outlast my computers, I reformatted to EXT2 and gains just over 25% transfer speed.  Well worth it.  But then again, if I lose my data, I'm fine with that so long as my computers are not corrupt at the same time.  I use only for computer backups.

[wbhood]

I tried everything without success.  I downloaded the 1.2 firmware and flashed the device. Once I did that the formatting of both drives worked perfectly.  I did notice that I did not have the choice to format to EXT 3 - it just automatically formatted them to EXT 2.  It is Sync-ing now and will be doing so for the next four hours.

Question... Once it is done, should I raise my firmware back to 1.3?  and if I do, will it let me change the format from EXT 2 to EXT 3?  If not, what would be the point of changing the firmware again?

Thanks to everyone.

[JoeSchmuck]

You should be able to raise your firmware to version 1.03 however you will not be able to reformat to EXT3 without loosing all your data.  So, if you're in a position to do that, I don't see why you couldn't.  You would have to just go to the RAID menu and tell it to reformat and select EXT3.  One thing, if you do format to EXT3, you cannot use an older version of the firmware since it only supports EXT2.

I guess the question you should ask yourself is, do you need EXT3.  You can do a Wiki search for EXT3 and it will give you a good description about it since my description was very general.

If you do reflash to firmware 1.03, I recommend removing the hard drives from the NAS first, then flash and reboot the NAS, verify you can login to the NAS, then shut it down and install your drives (in the same slots they came out of, of course), and power up your NAS.  This way if something odd happens, your data should be safe.

-Joe

[wbhood]

I am presently changing back to ver. 1.3 - Does anyone know why I had problems formatting the new drive before going back to 1.2 to get the job done?

If I have a drive failure, will I be able to format and sync the data with the new drive at ver 1.3 or will I have to go back to 1.2 again?  This is most important since I am trying to decide weather or not to re-format to EXT 3 - at this point the data is not important. Getting the proper configuration is.

[mzpx]

I have started with 1.3 and never used anything else. Never needed. Putting in two clean, fresh drives and setting them up for RAID1, formatting ext3 has worked w/o any hiccup. JoeSchmuck posted elsewhere that for him the device is faster with ext2, but - as he described - it is less robust. There are other tricks you can try if you are in the enterprising mood, I am not. :-)

According to what I read these devices tend to be sensitive (including the DNS-321) when someone tries to use previously formatted drives. So removing all partitions (with your choice of partitioning tools) before putting a used drive into the DNS-321 sounds like a good idea. There are some that claims that you should 'zero out the drive' using tools like Western Digital Drive Manager. Again, so far I did not need to do that, but it might help.

Real life failure: I have read here some people - including JoeSchmuck - trying to emulate a failure by pulling a drive (while turned off), starting up, shutting down again and then putting back the drive. They had not reported issues with that so far, but I don't know if the DNS actually rebuilds the RAID in such case or simply recognizes that the drive was put back. It should generally work.

I have not read anyone reporting actual real life failure of a HDD around here so far, so I have no info on recovery successes / failures.

The safe approach is that you should always use the same manufacturer / same model to replace a failed drive, but theoretically it is not a requirement. Just note that because two drives from two (or the same) manufacturer are labeled both as e.g. 1TB that does not mean they have the exact same number of sectors. Even the same manufacturer might use different number of sectors in different models. Since RAID1 in the DNS-321 works by synchronizing the physical sectors of the two drives, if your replacement drive has even a few LESS sectors than the original... it won't work and you will have a hard time to figure why.

(Actually the DNS-321 does not format the whole 100% of the drive for data, it keeps some room for administrative purposes, so I can imagine that it COULD use a drive with a FEW less sectors and just make the administrative part a bit smaller. But I never tried this and I am not planning to try. Is is up to the firmware if it could / would handle a situation like that.)

If you get a new drive and it fails within a short period of time (few months), your best guess is to RMA it to the manufacturer and get an exact replacement. And if your drives start failing after a few years... you best bet is to get two new drives and just copy the data.

[JoeSchmuck]

mzpx,
  Thanks for all the recognition.  I do my best to only post facts but I am human, I think.

mzpx makes a good point.  I don't think we discussed if your 1.5TB drives were factory fresh or previously formatted and you did mention NTFS, a format the NAS cannot use but Windoze does.  If they were partitioned at all then it could lend to a problem but I don't want to state for a fact it would unless I tested that out.

Since you have formatted the drives to EXT2 you should have no problem reformatting them to EXT3 once you install firmware 1.03.  Also, when discussing firmware versions, please use the actual number.  It's not 1.2 or 1.3.  Using 1.2 or 1.3 will cause someone reading the thread to think they are missing out on some firmware that really isn't out there.  Although most people should understand what you meant.

As for RAID 1 testing I've done...  If you pull out one of your drives (NEVER DO WITH POWER ON), the NAS will detect it as a drive failure.  The other drive will be fine and work.  When you install your old drive you will have to rebuld the RAID.  There is an option to manually or automatically rebuild the RAID.  Default is manual and I recommend leaving it that way.  If you are ever presented with a RAID 1 failure then you have the option to check each drive out and ensure you don't have data loss.  With any luck the automatic rebuild works properly but I have not tested it.  I'm a hands on kind of guy and the hardware needs to earn my trust.

I do want to state one thing because I don't know what you are using your NAS for, but if you plan to use it as your primary photo drive, even in a RAID 1 you are still taking a risk if you don't backup your data to another medium periodically.  I backup my photos to my wifes computer and periodically to DVD.  I also backup all my computers (3 of them) to the NAS.  I have some other data that if lost, I would loose sleep over as it's easily recovered, otherwise that's it.  If your NAS hardware does fail and you need access to the data on the drives, that's easily done (once you've done it) and I think I posted that somewhere but you will need to boot a Knoppix CD if you don't have a linux/unix machine.

One thing you can do to speed up file transfers is change to jumbo frames.  It's more than just a change in the NAS.  4K seems to be good.  And you might think 9K is better, well it is providing you are only transferring large files all the time.  Search for jumbo frames or slow transfer speed in these forums and I'm sure you will fine the info you need to ensure a speedy transfer.  Well as speedy as can be expected.

I hope we all have given you some information to digest.  If you have any more questions just post it.