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[ramcewan]

Hello,

I've got a DNS-321 that has been working well for me so far.  I bought a WD 1TB drive when I originally got the DNS-321 and it has been in there for a while. All the pc's in my house backup locally and then copy across the network to the DNS-321.  I also use it to keep copies of media and pictures.

Recently I noticed I was at 900GB and decided more storage was in order.  I saw a good sale for $99 on a Seagate 3TB desktop expansion drive.  I did a quick check and found youtube videos on how to pull the drive out and figured why not.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178117

So I got the drive and was able to extract it from the enclosure.  I turned off the DNS-321 popped the new drive into the DNS-321 in slot 2 (right facing it from front). I booted the DNS-321 back up and went to the web front end. 

I was prompted to format the new hard drive.  The window showed the drive size and brand, etc.  I clicked yes and off we went.  After the progress bar got to maybe 5-10% it said an error was encountered and the drive could not be formatted.  Error message code was 7 I believe.

I do not have fun_plug installed and I was not able to find any other information about how to resolve this issue.

Any ideas on how to get past this?  I did throw an older 120 GB SATA drive in the left slot and was able to format and can now see that as Volume 2.  It just doesn't seem to want to format the new 3TB.

[ramcewan]

okay - I think I found the problem... the seagate must be AFT format since legacy drive limit was 2.2TB this must be the case and I noticed this post lists the DNS-321 as not supporting of AFT

http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=50197.0

Is there anyway to get the DNS-321 to support it?  would the ALT-F or Fun_PLUG enable this?

[JavaLawyer]

Unfortunately, the the addressing limitations in the native firmware do not support any HDDs greater than 2TB.

You may find some relief on the following thread, but the content is not supported by D-Link:
DNS-321/323 - Alternative Firmware - Alt-F

[ramcewan]

JavaLawyer,

Thank you for your response.  It looks like ALT-F is probably the only option.

[JavaLawyer]

JavaLawyer,

Thank you for your response.  It looks like ALT-F is probably the only option.

If you do try that route, please post back and let us know how everything turns out. 

[ramcewan]

If you do try that route, please post back and let us know how everything turns out. 

I am considering it... still trying to understand what's involved with ALT-F roll back and plan for recover if needed. Steps;


1. Put seagate 3TB (back) into USB enclosure.
2. Copy contents of 1TB in DNS-321 to seagate 3TB via usb to computer on network, backup most important files on additional external 320GB drive.
3. Install ALT-F with existing 1TB drive.
4. Get ALT-F working with existing 1TB drive
5. Copy original contents of 1TB drive back into network
6. Install seagate 3TB using ALT-F

Then again newegg just gave me a 20% off coupon so a 2 TB WD Green drive seems like an easier option and keep the 3TB as USB drive possibly on network router.

[JavaLawyer]

I haven't personally used Alt-F, so I can't speak to the product's effectiveness or installation process. You seem to be moving in the right direction with creating a full backup of all your important data before trying anything. I can't speak to a rollback procedure if the installation does not go as expected. You may want to search the  DNS-323 board for posts relating to Alt-F -- the DNS-323 board was much more active than the DNS-321, so there's a great deal more content to mine.

[ramcewan]

I haven't personally used Alt-F, so I can't speak to the product's effectiveness or installation process. You seem to be moving in the right direction with creating a full backup of all your important data before trying anything. I can't speak to a rollback procedure if the installation does not go as expected. You may want to search the  DNS-323 board for posts relating to Alt-F -- the DNS-323 board was much more active than the DNS-321, so there's a great deal more content to mine.

I will try the DNS-323 forum as well, thank you.  From what I gather the rollback procedure is to flash the vendor firmware using the ALT-F update screen which is basically reuses the same flash updater software.  While this sounds scary I've being doing software flashes on android phones.  When a custom set of software is deployed it is deployed directly to memory, the recovery and flashing software that does this is part of the core OS and is usually not touched in the customization process.

[JavaLawyer]

I surmised the same thing, but I'm usually skittish when it comes to modding procedures like this, especially when a primary data storage device is at stake. Speaking for myself, I would have to develop a level of confidence that the mod works properly and is stable before fully committing my data.

[ramcewan]

tonight I flashed ALT-F after several days (literally) of copying the 900 GB of data across my network to the back up expansion drive.

Things went smoothly and within 20 minutes of the ALT-F completion of scans I was able to configure SAMBA and had my network drive visible again to the windows machine.  I did not lose any content in the process.

Next I will try putting the 3TB drive in and formatting but thus far very smooth transition to ALT-F

[JavaLawyer]

Thank you for the update. Please post back after you've installed the higher capacity HDD.

[ramcewan]

Thank you for the update. Please post back after you've installed the higher capacity HDD.

Completed the installation and format of the 3TB drive this morning. Created share in SAMBA and can now see and write to it on my windows machines on the network. I opted for seperate shares instead of doing jbod which is fine for me.   

Overall pleased with the move to ALT-F.

[JavaLawyer]

Great news! It looks as though you've breathed new life into your DNS-321. 
It would be great if a stable build of Alt-F were available for the DNS-343.