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[Dad Man Walking]

Long-ish post, hopefully the D-Link techs will see this and have something to say…

-  New DNS-321 RevA2 (from NewEgg last week) and 2 Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB drives (checked and they did not need Seagate’s firmware update).

-  Updated 321 to 1.01 firmware before installing drives.

-  Encountered “94% hang” problem while formatting individual volumes.  My solution was to close the browser after launching the format and wait an hour or two for the format to finish…then I power-cycled the unit and cleared the browser cache before accessing the unit.

(Why doesn’t D-Link have a sticky on this workaround?  I had to hunt a bit and it seems like it is not uncommon on the larger drives.)

-  I was able to format two separate volumes successfully.  However, I have not been able to get RAID-1 to work.  I have tried to do this several different ways

1.  Format each volume individually, then format into RAID-1.  Did not work.
2.  Format first volume, then format second volume directly into RAID-1, trying both manual and automatic rebuild options.  Did not work.
2.  Format both volumes directly into RAID-1 trying both manual and automatic rebuild options.  Did not work.

Between each attempt, I removed all partitions from the drives on my PC using the Windows Disk Management utility.

After the format attempts, it appeared that the drives were still available as individual volumes (I could map the drives from my Vista and XP machines) but the 321 status screen either showed separate empty drives or separate drives with zero free space (and in both cases they were still available as separate mapped drives in Windows and completed a quick R/W test).  And after “completing” the RAID-1 formats, the unit sent alerts upon rebooting saying both drives had failed. It’s like it’s trying to monitor a RAID-1 volume but is still serving individual volumes.

Any ideas what is happening?  And why it's happening to me?

[ECF]

Have you tried using another browser or try from another PC?

[Dad Man Walking]

Thanks for your reply.  Interesting question, I work from two different PC's with a shared monitor/keyboard so I can't be 100% sure.  But I probably did all of this work from a Vista/Firefox client, with maybe one session of IE7 in there somewhere.

My business laptop runs XP/IE6, I will give that a try and let you know if it works.

Related question...when I formatted the drives, I was initiating the session and then closing the browser.  I would reconnect after the format was complete.  Is it possible that by disconnecting like I did (vs. just clearing the cookies/cache and walking away) that I corrupted the format?

[fordem]

I've discovered that on a DNS-323 closing the browser during a format is not a good idea - so this may also be true on the DNS-321.

You might think that having started the format you could leave it to complete and log back in later, but, it didn't seem to work that way, and I can't explain the hows and the whys of it.  What I did was start the format directly before going to bed, and closed the browser and turned off the laptop - the next morning, long after the format should have completed, the DNS-323 was sitting there, not hibernated, and knowing from experience the next step after the format is a reboot, I rebooted it from the front panel (I don't think I had web access, but I don't recall clearly), and ended up having to do the format again.

[szmooz]

I have the same issue on my DNS-321.
The format hangs at 94% while using IE8 (Windows 7) and on my Vista with IE7.
Both times I have not closed the browser and just let it work it's magic during the format.

I did upgrade the firmware to support the 2 Seagate 1.5TB hard drives and I configured them for RAID 1
(required by my companies engineering group for redundancy since they will not be responsible for backups of this device).

Can anyone give any other solutions to try?

[Dad Man Walking]

Thanks, fordem.  They pay you to do this, don't they?

Would you be able to clarify the procedures that you recommend following to format the drives (into RAID-1 or any other configuration)?  I got to my “close the browser/hard restart after the blinking stops” procedure by looking at some other posts that recommended clearing cookies, but those posts were not specific on the exact procedure that has been used successfully.

What I understand you are recommending is:

(1) Begin with unpartitioned drives

(2) Launch the format from the OS/browser du jour

(3) After the format has started, clear the browser cookies but leave the session active.
     Question – Do you also clear the cache?

(4) Walk away from the machine, go play with your kids or something like that

(5) After a suitable period of time, return to the machine to find the drive formatted
     Question – will the browser now be reporting that the format is 100% complete?

(6) Close the browser and do a restart on the 321? 
     Questions – Restart from the browser or hard restart? Were you just restarting or resetting the 321?

Thanks in advance for any additional guidance.

[fordem]

If I recall correctly, when the format starts, a second browser window pops up, and it is that second broswer window that has the progress bar - simply leave those two browser windows alone, until it reports the format is complete, at which point the second window will prompt you to restart.  This second window will change to a "reboot timer" with a message saying something along the lines of "rebooting please wait" and when it times out the second window closes and the first one refreshes, coming to the sign on screen.

Obviously for the above to work, you must have popups enabled.

There is no need to clear cookies or clear cache or stop using the system, you can go play with your kids if you wish, or just open another browser window and surf the net, or do whatever you choose - just leave the two browser windows that relate to the format to do their thing.

And - no - D-Link doesn't pay me.

[Dad Man Walking]

fordem, I knew you weren't one of the staff...thanks for the help. I'll pay it forward somehow (I'm coaching youth basketball and little league this weekend, does that count?)

Anyway, I'll close the book on part 1 of my formatting adventure with this report...I did as fordem suggested, just launched the browser and walked away instead of fretting the 94% slowdown.  Came back after an hour or so and it was complete.

I was using Vista/IE7 and there were no popups generated.  (There is one when it validates the e-mail address so you still want to have the blocker turned off.)

[fordem]

fordem, I knew you weren't one of the staff...thanks for the help. I'll pay it forward somehow (I'm coaching youth basketball and little league this weekend, does that count?)

I guess it does - I'm not much of a sports fan myself and my kids are ... let's say a little older than that - but what counts is we all do our bit, how ever small, wherever we can, and make the world a better place.

On behalf of the youth basketball and little league teams I'd like to say thank you for your time - and - I'm glad I could help.

[ECF]

The DNS-321 and our other NAS device's will hang at 94% I do not know the reason why but it should finish successfully after a reasonable amount of time. If this is not the case I recommend clearing you browser cache and cookies and in some cases another browser or even PC if the format still is not completing. Please leave the browser formating pop-up open while format is in progress.

[fordem]

For clarification - and primarily because of the questions asked by Dad Man Walking above - should the browser cache and cookies be cleared after the starting the format or before?

[ECF]

It should be done before starting the format of the drives.

[tone21705]

How long are you talking about waiting? I just got my 1.5TB Barracuda in today and have been waiting about 45 minutes. Still stuck at 94%...I hope it comes through, I only have laptops here and no PC with SATA. So I cant manually format the drive. =[


EDIT-I spoke to soon, about 2 minutes after I posted that it worked. Just wait it out...Sorry guys!

[ECF]

So it seem waiting about 50 minutes on the 1.5TB drives in RAID1 will do the trick.

[Dad Man Walking]

So it seem waiting about 50 minutes on the 1.5TB drives in RAID1 will do the trick.

That was my experience.  I can't validate the time exactly since I just walked away and came back over an hour later.

You might want to put a sticky in here (and in the 323 forum?) about this...the format seems to works fine on the Seagate 1.5TB drive, but when it appears to hang at 94% it causes some customers to hit the panic button.  My own research on the forums only exacerbated my problem b/c there are a lot of references to the "hang" and suggestions for how to get around it, but no clear statement that says "just calm down and let it run."