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[FSUguy]

Hey guys,

I just got my D-Link 321 in and also two 2TB Seagate HDs.  I'm planning just to set this up as a media server for blu ray rips and music.  I'm not really to concerned about redundancy because I have a separate backup for my computer. This will be serving media mainly to a mac mini hooked up to my HT.  I was planning on either using RAID 0 or JBOD, but I'm not really sure what to pick.  Any suggestions on this or any other considerations would be great!  Thanks!

[FSUguy]

Oh, it will be hooked up to an Airport Extreme BTW.  I know people have been talking about significantly slower speeds than advertised and I do have gigabit ethernet to my mini, but as long as it can stream HD, I"m OK.  I should be OK right?

[FSUguy]

Anyone that can provide help?  Sorry, I'm just anxious to set this up.  Also, I'm trying to upgrade the firmware before installing the drives, but not getting to far.  Lastly, can this only be setup through Windows?  I have a mac and would prefer to set it up through there, but can do it through VMware with windows if necessary.

[FSUguy]

OK, new problem before I even get to updating the FW. I loaded the drives in, put in the easy search cd and ran it in VMware using windows XP. It opens find, but doesn't find any disk connect to my network to be configured! I checked all the connections and everything is fine.

PLEASE HELP!!!

[FSUguy]

Ok, I'm finally getting somewhere after about 2 hours with D-link's WORTHLESS tech support (both level I and II).  Literally they were just reading the manual to me and kept telling me to restart.

***Note:
I'm running a macbook pro with snow leopard (10.6.5) and windows XP in a virtual computer.  For whatever reason, the virtual PC could not see the NAS with the "easy search utility". Also, we could not configure it through my mac.

Finally, I steathily snuck into my brother's room and jacked his PC.  Upon running the "easy search utility" through his PC and hard wired, it FINALLY saw the NAS (2 hours wasted). Currently formatting 4TBs in RAID 0 with EXT 2 and I'm going to mess with it more tomorrow.

Once this thing is up and running, will I have full access features through my mac? Also,  should I switch to EXT3? This NAS will just be for streaming movies and some music.  Currently there is no UPS, but I will probably add one. 

Thanks

[jamieburchell]

Wow that's a lot of questions. I'm not sure which ones need an answer now.
The problem with RAID0 is that if any one of your drives fail you loose all your data. In JBOD, you still have a chance at recovering some data depending on where the NAS stored it. With sepearate volumes if a drive fails you know exactly which data you've lost. With the ability to create different shares over different volumes it makes no sense to me to choose either RAID0 or JBOD.
Of course, you should have a backup of your data regardless of which you choose.

EXT3 offers journaling support over EXT2 which provides a little more resilience. It is apparently slightly slower as a result.

If you are having issues accessing the NAS, you need to make sure you are on the same subnet as it. If your NAS is at 192.168.0.x and you are at 192.168.1.x you are going to have issues.

Also try disabling firewalls during setup.

[FSUguy]

Thanks for the help.  I really don't need the redundancy with RAID 1 because this will be for just storing BLu Ray rips and possibly itunes, so it seems like RAID 0 would probably be best performance wise.  Initially I formatted for EXT2, but it seems like EXT3 may be better and I'm hoping is only partially slower. The box ended up coming with FW 1.03, so no need to update. Now I'll start playing around with it I guess.

Being a mac oriented user, any suggestions on apps or specific things I should install?

Oh, BTW, I did finally get the "easy search utility" running on my virtual PC, through telling VMware to use a "bridged" connection for the network adapter instead of "NAT"....

[jamieburchell]

Sorry missed the part about the VM. Don't know much about Macs so can't help you there, but "time machine" rings a bell, try that.

Remember using RAID0 means you loose all your data if a drive fails.

[kevindt]

VMWare Fusion on Snow Leopard works fine - and yes, you've already found to set it to bridged!

You don't need the Windows config utility at all, nor do you need the virtual machine to set up the box though.  You just need to know the box's IP address to log directly into the webserver built in.  The problem is sometimes finding it.  My router (Buffalo running Tomato firmware) gives me a list of all connected devices.  I suspect you've found its address by now.

It is a really good idea to set it to a fixed (static) address on the same subnet if you plan to use FTP etc.  All via the device's web page.

Ext3 is not much slower and is safer as the information is "journalled" - which basically means there are often ways to recover from a bad area of data on the disc that are not available in ext2. 

The box works very, very easily with Finder in Mac to store/move data via a "Windows" (Samba) network, or using FTP.

Ask if you need help.

Kevin.

[FSUguy]

Thanks a lot for the help Kevin.  I'm still debating about keeping this thing as the performance for streaming video over gigabit to my mac mini via Plex has been awful.  The video is very choppy and can't keep up.

Any suggestions?

[kevindt]

The "gigabit" network transfer rate is lucky to reach 10-15 MB/s in the configuration used in the box, whatever the chipset datasheet says - barely above 100 base T really.  
I've not tried Plex yet (I do not have a compatible player on the TV either) but looking at it it seems worth a try.  I'll download it and see what it can do.

[FSUguy]

Plex is absolutely awesome for a media server for Mac.  Pair a Mac Mini and a tv and you will be in heaven.  New development, I unplugged the ethernet connection from the back of the mini and tried streaming a 1080p video from and uploading a 1080p video to the NAS.  The stream from the NAS was no longer choppy in Plex, but performance as far as streaming was still not good.  Uploading the same file over wireless N and the time was cut in half.  What the heck?

[FSUguy]

Can someone offer some insight on this?

I tried copying 180GB of data from a 1.5TB drive via USB 2.0 hooked into the back of my Airport Extreme to my 321 NAS also hooked up into the back of my Airport Extreme, and it estimated the time as 200+ hours to copy.

I cancelled that, hooked the 1.5TB drive to the back of my Mac Mini and copied the same data over wireless N to the 321 NAS and it gives an estimated time of 18 hours.

What the heck?  Shouldn't it be faster over USB 2.0 connected directly to the router?