Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[marco]

Hello everyone,

I just brought one home, found this thread and now before even using it I'm having second thoughts....

Overall advice/suggesitons welcome.....Not looking to spend $600 but want something reliable and reasonably quick.

Am I making a mistake?  Was the best option in 2007 no longer the best option in 2010?

If 323 is your recommended solution which FW would you suggest

Thanks a million,

Marco

[dosborne]

Always take the latest firmware.

For the price, I love this unit. It all depends on what you expect to do with it. For me, it does exactly what I need and I ended up buying a second one.

[LH2312]

Overall advice/suggesitons welcome.....Not looking to spend $600 but want something reliable and reasonably quick.

Am I making a mistake?  Was the best option in 2007 no longer the best option in 2010?

I guess the DNS-323 is the best NAS home box you can find on the still growing NAS market for the price right now (that's below 100$ "naked").

The only reason why I would start looking for an alternative is the relatively low transmission speed even for GB-LAN. But that's true for all NAS boxes from this hardware generation. I had the pleasure to test one of the newer NAS boxes (Synology) from the latest hardware generation and was extremely impressed. They run with transmission speeds of 60-90 MB/s as compared to our 15-20 MB/s with the 323.... boy, this makes a HUGH difference.

But - of course - they cost about 3-4 times what we paid for the DNS-323, that's it.
I guess I'll wait until they are on sale on ebay as used equipment

[gunrunnerjohn]

If you want more than about 15mbytes/sec transfers, I'd suggest you look elsewhere.  I have a DNS-321, DNS-323, and a Synology DS209.  Although the Synology was $300, it's about three-four times as fast as the DNS-323 and has many more options.  The Synology with a pair of 2TB drives will set you back $500 right now, NewEgg has 2TB drives for $99.

[jamieburchell]

Just to add - have been very impressed by mine. Has been rock solid for a couple of years now. But now I've said that...


There's also a lot of scope to modify and tweak the unit with some fairly harmless "hacks".

[dosborne]

The openess and "hack" community is really what sold me on the device. The DLink guys must see the benefit or they would have tried to close it down. It benefits everyone. It may not be the best performer, but as a micro-pc it certainly does what I personally need it to do.

Opinions though are like a..., well you know, everyone has one. Everyone has a slightly different set of purposes or uses they want to it to perform. Only the OP can truely decide if the device will do the tasks they want or if they can/want/need to spend more money to get something specific.

[marco]

Thanks everyone.

I'm only getting 10-12 mb/s on RAID-1 GigE connected iwth EXT3 fs.   Its a tough pill to swallow at the moment....On a related note has anyone tried a Syn 210j?  They're +100 more, but I'm half considering them for the speed bump.

Cheers,

[Rodent]

Thanks everyone.

I'm only getting 10-12 mb/s on RAID-1 GigE connected iwth EXT3 fs.   Its a tough pill to swallow at the moment....On a related note has anyone tried a Syn 210j?  They're +100 more, but I'm half considering them for the speed bump.

Cheers,

I only get 10-12 mb/s on standard volumes GigE connected with EXT3 fs also, If I am lucky and this has to do with what I am copying I have reached 18-20 bm/s but very rare.

R.

[LH2312]

Thanks everyone.

On a related note has anyone tried a Syn 210j?  They're +100 more, but I'm half considering them for the speed bump.

Cheers,

Just google for a review of the ds201j and you will find plenty of them...
I particularly like this short test/review: http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/review-synology-ds210j-network-attached-storage-device-2010028/

The LAN speed doesn't show a tremendous improvement over the DNS-323, but otah its just 100 bucks more... No too bad for double LAN speed!

[gunrunnerjohn]

My Synology DS209 runs at 3-4 times the DNS-323 transfer speeds, it's pretty close to having the disk physically connected.  I have it formatted RAID-1 using EXT3 with a pair of 1.5TB drives.

[LH2312]

Yeah, but the "j" series is a reduced feature model, i.e. lower cpu power, less RAM and so on. You cannot really compare this with the 210/209. I personally would like to get a "+" model, which *really* is running at the physical LAN speed limit.... 

[gunrunnerjohn]

I wasn't commenting on the "j" model, since I have no experience with those.

[irotjaf]

Initially I was searching for a device to put my external USB HDD in a network. Was really tired of having access only from one computer. Since the seller guys are i-diots most of the time, in two or three places they didn't know to point me somewhere. So I decided to go for a real NAS (I didn't even know this acronym existed). Got the DNS323 because it was cheap (150 CAD actually) and people liked it a lot online. I noticed also those hacks, which made me understand people have experience with it.

It works ok, but this is the only NAS I've had. If I would change it for something 3 times faster (with a torrent client) I would do it immediately for $100. This said, my setup was not that cheap. 150 NAS + 99 x 2 1TB HDD = $350 + TAX = $395

Add the CAT6 cables + one ASUS Gigabit Switch, totalling about $450 anyway...

And the funny thing is that now I found the devices I wanted initially for USB HHD in network (some toy from Patriot for $50). I didn't go back anyway. A NAS is a computer, you can park stuff there, access via ftp, automatic backups of specific folders (i.e. only family fotos), etc. Somebody suggested to use an old computer and park it somewhere in the house. I don't think its nice and proper, beside the fact that power consumption would be higher. But this depends on the ratio between technology attitude and economy/design.

P.s. What I really don't like of DNS-323 is that it doesnt connect really to an external USB. You can use the shareport utility and fake a connection to you computer but this doesn't work well. A NAS without at least two USB ports for external HDD is not a good solution (nearly all of us have extrnal HDD which may like to be together with the rest of the storage).

[gunrunnerjohn]

The Synology DS209 has three USB ports and is compatible with standard USB hubs to expand that.  NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3 disks connect directly and are recognized, and they can be used for the internal scheduled backups as well.

[LH2312]

The Synology DS209 has three USB ports and is compatible with standard USB hubs to expand that.  NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3 disks connect directly and are recognized, and they can be used for the internal scheduled backups as well.

Well, something I can only dream of with my DNS-323...  The worst thing is, from a hardware/system  point of view being able to support an external USB-HD is just peanuts. The problem is, we would need an internal backup app to be able to copy to an external disk... well, I asked D-Link for that here in this forum and I didn't even get an answer back.