| Article Index |
|---|
| D-Link DNS-323 2-Bay Network Storage Enclosure Review |
| Page 2 - Drive Installation |
| Page 3 - Configuration/Performance |
| Page 4 - Security/More Features/Conclusion |
| All Pages |
Configuration:
Configuration is nice and simple also, a little more involved than the hard drive installation, but if you follow the included quick-start guide you shouldn’t have any problems. With the DNS-323 plugged into your network somewhere, it will try to obtain an IP address automatically via DHCP, if it can’t it will default to 192.168.0.32, an unusual default number, but good because it’s unlikely to conflict with anything else on your network, run the included CD and it will find your device and start the configuration wizard with step-by-step instructions. It is in here that you can select how you would like your drives configured, you can have two separate drives, a JBOD array (single virtual drive), or you can set them up in a RAID 0 or RAID 1 array. RAID 1 (mirroring) would be best for any critical data, because if one drive dies, the unit will continue to function properly with all your data intact on the remaining drive until the faulty drive is replaced, whereby it will rebuild the array.
You can access the drives either by browsing to them through “My Network Places” in windows, or use the included software to easily map the drives to “My Computer” for easy access whenever you need it. An FTP server is included in the device so you can access it from anywhere in the world via the internet, some configuration of your router would be required but it is a handy inclusion for people away from home or the office.
The DNS-323 does not support either FAT32 or NTFS file systems, and will format any drive you put in there to convert it to its own file system, this means you won’t be able to take your drives that already have data on them and expect to make them a NAS drive, nor can you easily recover data from drives that have been in the unit should the unit itself fail. Rather disappointing.
Performance:
Data transfer performance is mostly dependent on your network, if you have a Gigabit network you can expect speeds of around 23 megabyte/s read and 12 megabyte/s write, however this will be much lower if you have a slower 100Mb network, as is expected.
When reading or writing data to the DNS-323 as a mapped network drive, it is as reliable as any other NAS device out there, I’ve been transferring files to and from it all day without an issue.
