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[ReefUser]

I need to increase the capacity of the two RAID 1 hard drives I am currently using in my DNS-323. The list of compatible hard drives in the sticky is not all that useful because it was last updated over seven months ago and it no longer usefully represents the drives available from major reliable suppliers such as Newegg.

I am partial to Western Digital drives and would prefer to use their product.

After establishing the neeeded capacity, I would very much like to increase the response of the DNS323. The device with my two existing WD 250 GB WD2500YS drives is pathetically slow. I doubt I will improve this very much but I at least want to try.

What is better wrt to speed; a 5400 drive with a 64 MB cache or a 7200 RPM drive with a 32 MB cache? My guess is that it will make no difference but I would appreciate opinions.

Is it known if any of the following four drives are fully compatible with the DNS-323?

WD7501AALS   Caviar Black 7200 RPM 32MB $70
WD10EALS      Caviar Blue   7200 RPM 32MB  $70
WD1001FALS   Caviar Black  7200 RPM 32MB $88
WD10EARS      Caviar Green  5400 RPM 64MB $65 ($70 for 1.5 TB)

I would certainly appreciate somethoughts about 1) what drive will work and 2) what will provide the best performance. I am leaning to the $70 1.5TB WD10EARS but am hestitant to buy two of them without first knowing it will work well and it will perform as well or close to that of a 7200 RPM drive.

[jamieburchell]

Do not buy the EARS models (or any Advanced Format hard drives) for the DNS-323. They are not supported.

As for drive performance/caching it is the opinion of people here is that the bottleneck is with the memory/processor of the NAS and not the drive. So in reality, you could put any modern drive in.

I'm currently very happily running a 1TB Samsung and a 2TB Samsung F3. They were cheaper than all other "brands" at the time.

[axa]

Hopefully not adding to your confusion.
Maybe I am lucky but I have had twin WD Caviar Green WD10EARS running in Raid1 for nearly an entire year with absolutely no problem whatsoever.

[jamieburchell]

As D-Link say they are unsupported and performance may degrade over time, why take the risk if you have a choice and there are so many other brands and models out there?

[ReefUser]

Do not buy ... any Advanced Format hard drives ... for the DNS-323. They are not supported.

Thanks for the responses.

Can I assume the WD10EALS (Caviar Blue/7200 RPM/32MB) is NOT an Advanced Format drive?

I tried to determine if it is an AF drive from the Western Digital web site but could not. How does one know which drives are AF drives? There is nothing obvious, at least to me.

If the WD10EALS is compatible, I am going to order two of them.

The WD1001FALS (Black) has a five year warranty, instead of three, so I assume that means it is a more reliable drive. However, they are $88 each so I think I will stick with the WD10EALS.

If a DLink representative reads this, I suggest the compatible drive list be meaningfully updated much more frequently than you do now. It was last updated in May; seven months ago. In a world of six months and less product cycles, this is much less than stellar customer service for a product that is still very much current. The fact that you are not actively supporting the DNS323 also makes a statement what to expect with other current DLink products. Please accept these thoughts as constructive feedback.

[jamieburchell]

Usually the description will say if a drive uses 4K sector advanced format technology. If it doesn't, it likely doesn't. If the sector size is labelled as 512 bytes, it also isn't AF.

Manufactures sell more "expensive" drives with a high MTBF and warranty and other technologies that make them more suitable for use in RAID- such as TLER. Other facilities may include stronger drive mechanics, increased tolerance to vibration, better error recovery methods etc.

In reality, any non AF drive will work fine in the 323.

I've used Samsung, Seagate and WD without issue.

Regardless how "enterprise" a drive is, any drive can fail and any drive manufacturer releases bad batches of drives.

The important thing is to have another backup of your files - and not just as a result of RAID mirroring.

[axa]

So I now have 2 DNS-323's.
One brand new with WD Caviar Greens, and one about a year old with WDEARS.

Interestingly - and it may have nothing to do with the drives, lan speedtests test a good bit faster to the new DNS-323.
The older one also runs about 4ºc hotter as well at all times- in fact one can feel it is hotter to the touch.
 
I wonder if this is just wear and tear, or related to the use of "unapproved" drives.