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[uneeq]

There have been so many of these threads slamming DLink for the present incapability of using a 1.5TB drive setup in a RAID configuration, really it is getting old.

I don't want to get into the whole arguement here, so I'm only going to suggest one thing:

I hope that hindsight has taught D-Link that it is better to be humble, in this case by putting the new firmware development on hold, releasing an interim firmware. This code could then be integrated with the new firmware being developed for an official release.

This would serve to:

1) Keep clients happy.
2) Reduce the amount of complaints on the forum that people have to sift through on a regular basis to find the more interesting information and topics.
3) Give moderators, technicians and engineers alike more time to spend on the development of the software rather than fending off unhappy customer and having to defending D-Link's position
4) Provide clients with what their interpretation of what SUPPORTS ANY SIZE DRIVE should mean, rather than the fact that they really are supported, simply in a specific configuration (which they obveously find unsatisfactory)


I don't mind people munching over the above, but please don't try to argue my points. I'm sure that D-Link and clients alike (once in a calm and rational state of mind) can agree that these are valid points. We can only hope that D-Link keep these in mind for the next time round.

[mig]

... because technicial it does support these bigger drives in RAID configuration, it just requires a firmware upgrade...

That is totally absurd logic!   
The DNS-434 does not support these bigger drives in RAID configuration, because the required firmware is not available. 

[azz710]

Folks,

This is now in the hands of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), complaint number 21360930.  Now we'll see if D-Link changes their online marketing material to reflect the fact that, indeed, there are hard drive capacity limits.

If D-Link had only changed their web site in response to my original formal complaint to add a note to the effect that the hard drive size limit is currently 1Tb, I would not have submitted the complaint.

If D-Link had so much as responded to me in this forum, regarding my claim of misrepresentation, I would not have submitted the complaint.

When I originally called D-Link and was told, by a pre-sales agent, that my 1.5Tb SATA drives were supported, had he told me, instead, of the 1Tb limit, I would not have submitted the complaint.

I am still a big D-Link fan and I would hope that D-Link reconsiders their new, unresponsive customer support policies.

Regards,
Jeff

[Texxustim]

Jeff,

Thanks for following through where others, including myself, have simply given up. As you can see from my previous posts I, like yourself, have made many pleas for at least some basic steps to be taken to at least get everyone on the same page (ie. your phone support diatribe is all too familiar to me as I'm sure it is for many). It's one thing to make a mistake, it's another altogether to actively avoid admitting it, making one excuse after another...

For what it's worth I have been using my 4 X 1.5TB 343 in a 4096 GB R5 (using the custom config previously described) for some time now and with the exception of throwing away a half a TB to JBOD it appears to be functional. I am doing this of course with no assurance that I have any real protection but I am taking the appropriate measures to ensure my data stays secure until the now infamous 1.03 code is FINALLY released. I don't like this but at least it prevents all of my new hardware from simply depreciating on the shelf...

Again, I applaud your follow through and believe it is absolutely warranted despite what heat you may receive from others on this forum.

Sincerely,

Tim

[hilaireg]

Documentation and product packaging are typically the last items to be updated post-product release and in many cases, they remain 'as-is' for the life of the product.  I suppose this is partly because documentation, repackaging, and in many cases, product updates are all considered costs.

IMHO, providing up-front knowledge of limitation (or maximum) would have been a better strategy.  The downside, I suppose, would be that potential new customers would overlook the DNS as viable product once large capacity HDD's would become the norm.

Perhaps what is required at this point, is more active posting from both the customer and support folks at D-Link.  At this point, my only concern with the actions taken would be that D-Link decides to shut this forum down ... which would shame.

Cheers,

[azz710]

Dear HilaireG,

Whatever D-Link's strategy, and however expensive it might be to update documentation, both printed and on shipped media, it is very inexpensive, indeed quite trivial, to add a note to one's web site when issues such as this surface.  The issue became public knowledge before I bought my DNS-343 at the end of December, 2008, but D-Link didn't even think to tell its sales personnel not to inform potential customers, just as they didn't tell me when I called, that the unit as shipped won't properly support 1.5Tb hard drives.  And, on this forum, D-Link should not be dismissing people out of hand who bring this up as an issue (the famous "it'll be ready when it's ready" post).  This is most definitely not good customer service and, as I've said so often before, this saddens me deeply, for D-Link is at the top of my list in product design and build quality and their customer service used to be superlative.

As for my formal FTC complaint, I would have made it had I merely been fluffed-off by D-Link when I discovered, before checking this forum, that there are severe known problems in the current firmware of which we were not informed.  So, then, as my FTC complaint is unrelated to this forum, I would not imagine that D-Link would shut it down, for that would surely make the news.

Regards,
Jeff

Documentation and product packaging are typically the last items to be updated post-product release and in many cases, they remain 'as-is' for the life of the product.  I suppose this is partly because documentation, repackaging, and in many cases, product updates are all considered costs.

IMHO, providing up-front knowledge of limitation (or maximum) would have been a better strategy.  The downside, I suppose, would be that potential new customers would overlook the DNS as viable product once large capacity HDD's would become the norm.

Perhaps what is required at this point, is more active posting from both the customer and support folks at D-Link.  At this point, my only concern with the actions taken would be that D-Link decides to shut this forum down ... which would shame.

Cheers,

[escrawford]

Just got an email from D-Link regarding a request for a release date of 1.03:

"This email is meant as a call notification ONLY. The Case ID that references your Technical Support call is DLK400040853.

Unfortunately we do not have any ETA as to when the new firmware will be released."

Weren't they previously talking about a release date before Thanksgiving?  Nice to know that they haven't even sent out an update yet...

By the way, I used to work for a company that manufactured large scale tape backup systems and we released firmware about every 3-4 months.  There was always open communication between us and our clients regarding bugs so that we could maintain good standing with our customer base.  Too bad D-Link has taken the other route...

[chaicka]

It's Year 2009 now, and even Obama is soon to take over white house... So where's the new firmware for DNS-343?

Looks like D-Link just ain't there yet for NAS device... taking so long to work on a firmware and selling a product that's premature (means not ready for market, codes are of beta quality and making the consumers beta testers).

That's one bad publicity for D-Link, who spent so much effort to build up its reputation - no. 1 consumers' choice for SOHO network/wireless network products.

[Migailu]

Hi All !

The German Support told me in December, that the new 1.03 Firmware hopefully will be released
End of January, or in the Beginning of February 2009...
Hope dies at last... ;-)  But when I read the Statements here, I think it will be January 2010... ;-)


greets
Migailu

[JaLooNz]

And guess what? Western Digital 2TB drives are coming out soon and we are still unable to run 1.5TB drives. I bet there will be another round of waiting for other users coming soon.

[escrawford]

The unfortunate part is that we resell the DNS-343 to clients for movie backup and with the lack of response from D-Link we have to assume the worst, that the DNS-343 will NEVER support drives greater than 1TB when combined with RAID5.

As much as I hate to say it we'll have to start moving clients over to ReadyNAS or LaCie if they need greater than 3TB of RAID5.

[Bhavik]

And guess what? Western Digital 2TB drives are coming out soon and we are still unable to run 1.5TB drives. I bet there will be another round of waiting for other users coming soon.

Just FYI.

If you read the previous posts on this topic, one of the D-Link members said that they did not receive the 1.5TB drives before they were released, therefore could not work on the firmware until they were released to the public.

Hopefully they will receive the 2TB drives early and will be able to start working on the firmware and have it released by the time that the drives are available to the public. Also I hear Seagate are working on 2TB drives as well.

And also mentioned that there is no point rollback all the features they were adding to the firmware and just release one that adds 1.5TB support as they would waste a lot of development time.

I'll keep running my 4x1.5TB drives in 4TB of RAID 5 until the new firmware arrives and not planning on swapping the disks out until a lot longer in the future.

[azz710]

Dear New in New Zealand,

Um, 'fraid not.  The "engineers did not receive the 1.5Tb drives in advance" argument is almost certainly a complete red herring.  In fact, what most likely really happened is that the DNS-343 was designed from the start with a 1Tb drive capacity limit for RAID and, now, they're scrambling to catch-up.  Most software like this is written with design limits, normally chosen well beyond the state-of-the-art at the time the project is started.  In other words, it is most likely that when D-Link either wrote or decided to use existing third-party RAID code for the DNS-343, the design limit of that RAID code was (and still is, apparently), 1TB per drive.

Let's consider what the difference is between, say, a 500Gb hard drive and a 1Tb hard drive.  Obviously, the capacity of the second is twice that of the first, but there might be other differences as well.  What's known as the "geometry" of the drives might well be different (bits per track, tracks per cylinder, number of platter surfaces, and many more parameters).  The beauty of modern hard drive architecture is that all of this data is self-defining.  In other words, when driver software first connects to a drive, it can read all of the drive geometry parameters and adjust its operation accordingly.  This wasn't always true, which is why one had to know one's new drive's type number when installing it in the earlier years of the personal computer era.  Clearly, the DNS-343 can tell the difference between any 500Gb hard drive and any 1Tb hard drive, this by reading the geometry parameters.

Now, let's consider the difference between a 1Tb hard drive and, say, a 2Tb hard drive.  More important, is there any significant difference between the drive geometry, as in the case above?  The answer is that there is not.  So, then, perhaps the 2Tb drive has twice the number of platter surfaces or twice the bits per track, etc.  And the DNS-343 could easily deal with a 2Tb drive as long as it can determine the drive's geometry parameters, this assuming no pre-defined hard drive capacity limit.

And why would there need to be such a limit in the first place?  That, too, is a simple answer.  For arrays of data have to be constructed, space for these must be allocated, the amount of RAM available to the firmware must be sufficient to construct such tables, and so on.  This sort of thing is much, much easier to do if these arrays of data and such are pre-allocated and pre-defined.  To do this sort of thing dynamically is a great deal more difficult (and, I must say, much more professional, especially in a case like this).

When I first read the D-Link marketing material about this device, and saw that it would handle drives of any capacity, I was surprised and delighted, for if that were true, it would have meant that this was very slick software, indeed, capable of reading drive geometry and adjusting itself, using dynamically allocated data tables, other data areas, control blocks and such, to any drive geometry and capacity, even geometries and capacities not known in advance.  In this case, there would still be a capacity limit, but this would depend on the amount of available RAM and, presumably, it would be able to determine the maximum configuration in advance (code such as this might, for example, be able to handle three drives of 2Tb each but not four drives unless the drive capacity were reduced).

Hopefully, the DNS-343 has enough RAM to deal with 1.5Tb and 2Tb drives.  If not, D-Link will need to update the hardware and, if our experience with the (now superlative) DIR-855 is any indication, we'll be waiting a long time, indeed.  But, with any luck, there's enough RAM and all they'll need to do is change some data area definitions and a little code.

Like you, I'm a very loyal D-Link customer and recommender.  I've had enough experience with non-D-Link routers and other home networking hardware to know how much better, in general, D-Link is than its competition.  But, despite this loyalty, I'm still not willing to let D-Link get away with what amounts to political responses designed to avoid admitting mistakes, flaws in their products, and so on.

Do you wonder why we keep getting inconsistent answers from D-Link support personnel, that is when they respond at all?  Clearly, D-Link is most interested in dealing with this issue as though it were our fault for buying drives of larger capacity than this device was designed to support, this in both the absence of published, well-known design limits and in the presence of much documentation (not to mention claims by D-Link sales personnel who were just reading the same specification sheets we find on the net) to the effect that all newer SATA drives are supported, than in being 100% honest.  And, as I keep saying, I really expect better customer service than D-Link is currently delivering.  Your loyalty, however, appears to stretch further than mine.

Regards,
Jeff

If you read the previous posts on this topic, one of the D-Link members said that they did not receive the 1.5TB drives before they were released, therefore could not work on the firmware until they were released to the public.

[fordem]

Excellent theory, but somewhat dated.

The DNS-343 detects it's SATA disks as SCSI, not unusual with linux, and SCSI has never used the old CHS drive geometry - it's all about blocks.

[azz710]

Dear Fordem,

Dated?  Indeed.  But the lack of CHS (cylinder/head/sector) or CCHHR (the somewhat more versatile cylinder/head/record) knowledge on the part of the driver doesn't invalidate my argument, for no matter how the disc geometry is expressed by the drive, it should still be possible for the DNS-343 to deal with drives of any size, detecting all that it can detect when the drive details are fetched upon connection.  My dwelling upon the true, internal geometry betrays my early IBM mainframe background, I suppose, and the fact that I wrote native code to support the complete MBBCCHHR geometry specification back in the day doesn't help, but it doesn't hurt my argument, either.  And, of course, you're referring to SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) and not native SCSI, for SCSI is a parallel interface and SATA drives use a serial interface.

But no matter what the driver must know about attached drives, even if it's only the total number of blocks, it should still deal with arbitrary drive sizes up to its pre-defined limit as designed.  And, again, my contention is that, probably for reasons of implementation simplicity (static vs. the more difficult dynamic memory allocation model), a well-above-the-state-of-the-art maximum drive size of 1Tb was chosen, with two facts contributing to the problem: 1) The development cycle was, perhaps, longer than anticipated and 2) drives with capacities above 1Tb came to market much, much sooner than D-Link imagined they would.  And the fact remains that D-Link was well aware of the 1Tb limit, but chose not to mention it so as not to discourage future sales, perhaps.

This works in D-Link's favor, in the short term (but not the long term, of course, if D-Link drives away its most loyal customers in the process by allowing the marketing- and legal departments to prevail over their superb engineering team), and against the customer, also in the short term.  The 1Tb limit should have been stated and, even now, whilst we're waiting for support for drives over 1Tb in capacity, the D-Link web site should be modified to state the current limit.  And, when the new firmware comes out, the true drive size limit must be stated by D-Link for, having been exposed, they can no longer rely upon stating no limit and counting upon the drive manufacturers to withhold their breakthroughs so as not to put paid to the, um, uh, inveracity of the D-Link marketeers.

Regards,
Jeff

Excellent theory, but somewhat dated.  The DNS-343 detects it's SATA disks as SCSI, not unusual with linux, and SCSI has never used the old CHS drive geometry - it's all about blocks.