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[bonkas]

My First post here, Hi everybody!

I have read the supported Hard Drive list for my DNS-320 and I have hit a bit of a hiccup.

I had ordered the 2TB Western Digital Green hard drives and then found they have issues because oif thier sector size?

Unfortunatly all the drives I can order here in New Zealand seem to be the newest generation of disks and do not work well then in RAID which is what I want to do (Raid 1 with 2x 2TB Drives)

Here is a list of drives that are available from pretty much all suppliers here in NZ:

1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS
2TB Seagate Barracuda ST32000542AS  - Too Slow for my liking

1TB Western Digital WD1002FAEX Caviar Black
1TB Western Digital WD10EALS Caviar Blue
1TB Western Digital WD10EALX Caviar Blue
1TB Western Digital WD10EARS Caviar Green
1TB Western Digital WD10EURS AV-GP
2TB Western Digital WD2002FAEX Black Edition
2TB Western Digital WD20EARS Caviar Green - I had ordered two of these until I read they will not work without problems.
2TB Western Digital WD20EURS AV-GP

I cannot seem to find any Hitachi or Samsung drives at a reasonable price.

The drives listed above are about all that are available to me in New Zealand.

Will any of those be suitabble for a raid 1 configuration?

Edit:

I have found a supplier of Samsung Spinpoint F3 Drives - These are reported to work without issue?

[jamieburchell]

I'm using Spinpoint F3, no problems. If any of the drives you mention AREN'T 4k sector/Advanced Format drives, you'll be OK.

I believe it is possible to use 4k sector drives outside of a RAID, but you need to do a bit of work aligning partitions.

[D-Link Multimedia]

DNS-320 or DNS-321? Just want to clarify since this is posted in the DNS-321 forum.

[bonkas]

It's a DNS-320 - I could not find a forum for the DNS-320 Drives?

Problem I have is nobody lists the sector sizes of these drives.

Is there anywhere with a list I can compare my model numbers to and check the sector size?

I can get the SpinPoint F3 at a reasonable price - Will call to confirm model number today.

After further investigation the 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS has a 512byte sector size so should be OK?

Also is it still true the Samsung and Seagate you do not have to worry about TLER? Because this should be available when in raid otherwise I will see a slowdown when I start to use up alot of data correct?

[Tarblak]

It's a DNS-320 - I could not find a forum for the DNS-320 Drives?

Problem I have is nobody lists the sector sizes of these drives.

Is there anywhere with a list I can compare my model numbers to and check the sector size?

I can get the SpinPoint F3 at a reasonable price - Will call to confirm model number today.

After further investigation the 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS has a 512byte sector size so should be OK?

Also is it still true the Samsung and Seagate you do not have to worry about TLER? Because this should be available when in raid otherwise I will see a slowdown when I start to use up alot of data correct?

I use two Samsung F4 2 tb disks with 4k sectors in a Raid1 setup. Although not officially supported by D-Link this works great. I know 4k sectors aren't supposed to work with the NAS but Samsung has a 512 byte emulation kicking in if the computer doesn't support it. I don't think disks have the TLER issues as the WD Green EARS series.

I heard somewhere the F4 could cause slow performance when it gets filled up but I have about 700 GB data on the disk and still get the same speed as in the beginning (about 22-24 mb / second when copying files over a gigabyte network). This is more than OK for me.

Anyone who has a different opinion?

[D-Link Multimedia]

I use two Samsung F4 2 tb disks with 4k sectors in a Raid1 setup. Although not officially supported by D-Link this works great. I know 4k sectors aren't supposed to work with the NAS but Samsung has a 512 byte emulation kicking in if the computer doesn't support it. I don't think disks have the TLER issues as the WD Green EARS series.

I heard somewhere the F4 could cause slow performance when it gets filled up but I have about 700 GB data on the disk and still get the same speed as in the beginning (about 22-24 mb / second when copying files over a gigabyte network). This is more than OK for me.

Anyone who has a different opinion?

4K sectors work fine on DNS-320 and future model DNS-325. In fact they will work on the existing models as well however the main issue comes up when mixing non-Advanced Format Drives with Advanced Format drives. If you buy 2 Advanced Format drives and format them together you will be fine.

[bonkas]

So if I was to purchase the SpinPoint F3 or F4 Drives and configure these in a Raid1 array they will work with no adverse effects?

Basically ANY Seagate or Samsung drive will work as this technology that gives problems is not enabled on these drives? Or it is the sector size that I need to be looking at? Getting a bit confusing now.

If you buy 2 Advanced Format drives and format them together you will be fine.

I was also wondering about the Western Digital 2TB Green Drives WITH Advanced Format - These work OK with no slowdowns? as long as I have two identical - correct?

I would prefer to get the Western Digital drives as these come in 2GB capacities while all other brands are 3-4x the price for 2TB of space.

just clearing up which drives I should purchase and stay away from before I buy.

[bonkas]

They talk about changing jumper setting for the Advanced Format drives in this thread - http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=12976.15

Does this apply to my situation?

[D-Link Multimedia]

I was also wondering about the Western Digital 2TB Green Drives WITH Advanced Format - These work OK with no slowdowns? as long as I have two identical - correct?

In my internal testing, the WD Green drives do suffer from some performance loss when compared to a non AFT drive like WD Blue or Black drives but it is minor in my opinion with a variance of 1-2mb/s read/write. Beyond that I have had no issues.

[bonkas]

To be sure I will not encounter these issues any Seagate or Samsung drive will be OK as these do not employ this rechnology?

I understand now that 4k sectors are not the issue here but rather the Advanced Format Technology used by Western Digital drives causing delays and drives to dissapear from the array when this technology is triggered?

If this is indeed the case any Seagate or Samsung drive with work without issue even with a 4kb sector size as these do not emply any kind of AFT at all?

[D-Link Multimedia]

Any drive from any vendor that exceeds the 512-520-bytes per sector is an Advanced Format drive. As far as I know that includes any 4K drives on the market today.

[bonkas]

Hmmm... Thats a little unfortunate as I can only get my hands on the latest model of these drives which appear to all have this technology.

I can get some SpinPoint F3 drives which are a older model 1TB vs 2TB but they may not have this technology?

Or do you think I should just buy some latest seagate drives or the WD Green drives and see how I go?

I would like to avoid any future issues if possible but as I said all the drives I can get my hands on appear to be the latter drive affected by this problem.

[D-Link Multimedia]

Hmmm... Thats a little unfortunate as I can only get my hands on the latest model of these drives which appear to all have this technology.

I can get some SpinPoint F3 drives which are a older model 1TB vs 2TB but they may not have this technology?

Or do you think I should just buy some latest seagate drives or the WD Green drives and see how I go?

I would like to avoid any future issues if possible but as I said all the drives I can get my hands on appear to be the latter drive affected by this problem.

As I said in my testing the speed difference was negligible at most. If you are just using them for simple backup the green drives are fine. They emit low heat and are pretty reliable. You will be hard pressed to find anything above 1TB without Advanced Format. The green drives are cheap and do work in a Raid 1 config fine (tested here).

[bonkas]

Thanks D-Link M,

You have cleared everything up for me!

The D-Link guys on the phone here in New Zealand were having a hard time trying to understand what information I was after.

I have ordered 2x 2TB Western Digital Green drives - Will let you know how I get on with them in Raid 1!

Thanks for everything!

[paul4]

Hello

Not sure if it belongs here or should have separate topic.
I also bought DNS-320 with 2 x 2TB disks WD20EARS. (Caviar Green 64MB cache 5400-7200 RPM) (dont had many other choices).

I put both disks in, connected DNS-320 to my dlink router DI-524 gave it static IP from my router DHCP and tried to configure DNS-320 but here problems starts.

I connected to it via mozilla firefox on its IP address, logged in and configuration page appeared.
Both disks were recognized so i chose setup with 2 separate disks, clicked to format and was waiting for long time. I got to initializing 8% but not further. LED diods on DNS-320 dont shows any actions performing (arent blinking just are on).
After i restarted DNS-320 got to same setup so i rather skipped it and tried to configure it via Maintenance and Raid tab. Here I again chose same things, 2 separate disks, clicked format. Got to 16% of initializing for some reason and again nothing more. After some time it wrote error > Hard Drive(s) Formatting Failure(Error Code:502). I was trying to search for that error code but wasnt able to find it. After this error it offers me restart option but after restart nothing change and disks arent formatted. 

I dont so much care about problem with advanced format speed issue, if it even is problem as you stated that it should work fine on DNS-320.

4K sectors work fine on DNS-320 and future model DNS-325. In fact they will work on the existing models as well however the main issue comes up when mixing non-Advanced Format Drives with Advanced Format drives. If you buy 2 Advanced Format drives and format them together you will be fine.

My problem is that im just unable to format my disks and start using them.
All others who were writting about problems with advance format at these WD disks wrote about having no problems with initial formatting and were just performing additional changes to increase speed but this isnt my issue .

Shall I rather use USB cable for initial setup (if is such setup possible via usb or usb is just to add another storage devices) can problem be in my network ? Or once i issue command to format everything is doing just DNS-320 and problem is elsewhere?
Just for note I dont have jumpers on neither of disks if its relevant.
Also i wonder how long should that formatting of 2 x 2TB disks in non raid non JBOD setup last ?

Thank you in advance for your answer