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[robcohen]

Hi,
Evaluating my options for a new purchase and so I'd ask you if you'd buy the DNS-323 again?  I plan to use in a small office environment with mostly Win7/Vista systems and one Mac Snow Leopard machine on a gigabit wired network.  This will be a place to store business files I share between systems and perhaps media files accessed with a Brite-view CinemaTube device.

I've been trying out an inexpensive IOCELL NetDisk 352-ND unit that has (finally) become stable once I updated to newer drivers found on the Ximeta.com site rather than the released ones from iocellnetworks.com.  The original drivers caused an unbelievable number of problems with drives that wouldn't stay on line, would disappear and never appear again until several reboots and/or complete re-registration of the unit to all the computers. 

Besides the driver issues with IOCELL, it doesn't seem possible to access the device from an arbitrary system without either installing their drivers or sharing it from one of the Windows systems.  It isn't ping-able even when I reserve an ip address for it by MAC, nor does it respond to telnet or ftp and never mind it's not DLNA or UPNP compliant.  So it was an $80 lesson on impulse buying at Fry's :-).

Appreciate hearing your recommendations about what you'd buy if shopping today.  Not sure if I want a 2 or 4 bay device, so am thinking some about the DNS-343 as well.

Thanks in advance!

Rob

[Biscotte]

First off - good luck with the mac.  What with limited software and proprietary tweaks to stop you backing up your own music or playing cheap DVDs from overseas .  .  .  good luck. 

In answer to your question - yes.  One caveat - the price.  In Britain it has never dropped below 120 pounds Sterling.  I have seen them in the states with rebates and things for half that - good old rip off Britain. 

I have five 323s but would have bought many, many more if they had been cheaper.  I use them for live data, parent backup and grandfather backup, plus offsite - and I don’t use any mirror function. 

Used as they are intended, they work fine so long as you only expect them to do what they are designed to do.  Speed on a gig network is better than most companies I go into! 

Downsides for me are the date function for one.  The list of requests for the next firmware update give you an idea of other improvements that can be made.  On that subject, i just get the feeling d-link don't care and FW1.08 could be the last one - all the d-link posts seem to come from Mr Grumpy or Mr Offended. 

Clearly the 323s are very configurable if you have some Linux knowledge - I don’t.  But I have dabbled a bit for example with bit-torrent stuff - partially successful except deleting the files after download!  I am still toiling with auto nightly backups.  If I don’t get there, it is not the end of the world.   

Biscotte

[fordem]

Let me start by pointing out that Ximeta's NetDisk is not a Network Attached Storage server - and really should not be compared to the DNS-323 - the only similarity is that they are disk enclosures with a network cable, everything else is different - as an example, the DNS-323 works just fine without drivers.

To answer your question - yes I would - if I could be guaranteed that I would receive a hardware rev. C unit - I'm quite happy with the unit I have (hardware rev. A), and would recommend it to anyone looking for low cost NAS storage, the feature that the rev C has that the rev A lacks is the ability to power on when power is restored, important if you live in an area with frequent power outages.

[gunrunnerjohn]

A possible solution to your power-on issue?

http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=9038.0

[jeremy]

No way would I buy this unit again, in fact mine will be sold on ebay just as soon as my new qnap arrives. Dlink support is awful, take a look at the beta forums.

[mcsteve]

I would probably buy a dns-323 again. The device works great for me and has never given me any major problems. The only failing I have found is an issue with upnp (track ordering) which has been posted about on here many times. If that is ever fixed, I would definitely buy one again and recommend it to friends. Until then, if I need to buy a replacement, I would be doing some extensive research first into alternatives before parting with any cash.

[bella]

same here. I would buy few more DNS-323 if my financial situation allowed.
FYI, I have these 2 units at home. It works pretty fine though not perfect!

[jeangb]

Shure !
I recently bought a second unit to backup my 2 To of live stuff. This way I get reduncy from disc and from devices.  I'm a home user, I don't need RAID neither UPnP because I have a Netgear media player to stream to my home entertainment system.
These are cheap on eBay, easy to install and run if you don't ask too much from them. For example, I've try to use the download option to copy large folder from one unit to the other but it freeze and the files on the second unit are not accessible anymore to delete or move.
These DNS-323 got limits but for the price they give a lot.