D-Link DNS-320 NAS Review
The DNS-320 gigabit NAS has been around for some time now. I recently picked one up at a local CompUSA for under a hundred bucks. Adding a couple of Western Digital 2-TB SATA drives for around $80 each should provide some temporary relief for my disk space shortage problem at home.
Issues
In the past I reviewed the DNS-321 and the major complaint there was the device’s inability to utilize gigabit network capacity due to severe memory and CPU restrictions. While the DNS-321 was initially built as a 100-Mbit NAS and later converted to gigabit, the DNS-320 was built as a gigabit-capable storage device from the very beginning. It is still a very flimsy-looking plastic box filled with cheap components. If I am lucky, it may run for a year or two before the cooling fan fails or the power supply burns out.
How hard was it to configure DNS-320, I hear you asking? Surprisingly, not very easy at all. It took me – a senior Unix sysadmin – and a colleague – an experienced network admin – about two hours to get this little box working. The problem was the network: during the first-time setup, the DNS-320 can only be accessed if you have a DHCP server running on your network. With the DNS-321 you could just hookup your laptop via a crossover cable and configure the network manually by connecting to the default IP address of 192.168.0.1. With the DNS-320 we had to install and configure a DHCP server on an OpenSuSE box just to get to the Web interface.
The Web interface itself is not standards-compliant and doesn’t work with Firefox running under Linux. After I finally managed to get the DNS-320 on the network, I had to use IE on my Windows 7 laptop to configure storage volumes. Another annoying issue with the Web interface is the very short default session timeout period. Fortunately, this setting can be adjusted. What cannot be changed are the volume names. If you have multiple D-Link NAS systems on your network, things can get a bit confusing:
Configuration
The DNS-320 lets you chose from four volume configuration options:
Standard – creates one volume on each disk (Volume_1 and Volume_2). This configuration offers no redundancy and no performance gains. However, it simplifies data management and allow using external applications to mirror data between volumes. The DNS-320 has the ability to backup itself to another NAS (doesn’t have to be a D-Link) using FTP.
JBOD – creates a single volume that spans both disks. This gives you a large single volume (up to 4 TB with dual 2-TB disks). However, the chance of data loss increases, since if any one disk fails, the entire volume will fail.
RAID 0 – creates a single striped volume using two disks. Arguably, this is a nearly useless feature for this particular system, since even one SATA disk has higher I/O than the gigabit network through which the data is being accessed.
RAID 1 – creates a single volume with data mirrored across the two disks. If one disk fails – which, with the way quality of hard drives is dropping, will happen in less than a year – the data should still be preserved and available on the remaining disk. Naturally, you end up with only 50% of usable disk space. The front panel of the DNS-320 has an LED for each disk. If a disk fails, the LED turns yellow (or red), at which point you will need to power the system down (it is not hot-swappable) and replace the failed drive with another disk of the same geometry. Once you power up the system, it should start rebuilding the RAID set. During this time the data should still be available to you.
The two practical options for volume configuration are Standard and RAID 1. If you use standard, you can use an external application (simple case: rsync running on a Linux box NFS-mounting volumes from DNS-320 or just have two DNS-320s cross-backup data to each other) to mirror your data between the DNS-320 and another network storage location. This would be more secure than using RAID 1 on a single DNS-320. As I already mentioned, the box is cheaply made and the chance of the entire enclosure failing is probably as high as that of a disk failure.
Once you have configured your data volume, there are a few configuration changes that I would recommend to improve performance and lower the risk of data loss:
Go to Management -> System Management -> System Settings -> Idle Time and change the idle timeout to something considerably longer than the default five minutes.
In Management -> System Management -> Power Management: disable HDD hibernation, enable power recovery, set fan to auto low/high, and leave power off disabled.
In Management -> System Management -> Notifications: configure and test outgoing email. It is important to be notified of disk errors and overheating incidents before they cause irrecoverable data loss. That’s why I wan to recommend this uk based heater panels. You can configure DNS-320 to use SMTP-compatible mail service, such as Gmail.
In Management -> System Management -> Time and Date set the correct time zone for your location and specify the NTP server (you can select one from the drop-down or use a public NTP server, such as pool.ntp.org).
Once you done configuring your DSN-320, go to Management -> System Management -> System Settings -> Configuration Settings and save the configuration file to your computer (not to the DNS-320 file share, of course). After that I would recommend rebooting the DNS-320 just to see that everything is still working as expected. To reboot go to Management -> System Management -> System Settings -> Restart
Performance
For the test I was using a gigabit network with no other traffic, firewalls, or anything else that may introduce inconsistencies. The first simple test was to copy about 80 GB of data (just some potpourri of files I had in the My Documents folder) from my Windows 7 PC to the mounted DNS-320 network share via the Windows Explorer (simple copy-paste). Data transfer rate for uploading was in the range of 5-17 MB/s and for downloading: 7-23MB/s. Whenever transferring files over the network, you need to keep in mind that a few large files will always go through faster than many small files, even if the overall amount of data being transferred is the same.
The second test involved transferring the same 80 GB of data over FTP. Being the File Transfer Protocol, it is of no surprise that FTP transfer went much faster: 20-28 MB/s for uploading and 23-32 MB/s for downloading.
The last test was to NFS-mount the DNS-320 volume on a Linux box and run the Bonnie++ test on that filesystem. The bonnie++ syntax for this test was:
bonnie++ -n 0 -u 0 -r `free -m | grep 'Mem:' | awk '{print $2}'` -s $(echo "scale=0;`free -m | grep 'Mem:' | awk '{print $2}'`*2" | bc -l) -f -b -d /nas2
In this case the /nas2 filesystem was NFS-mounted from the DNS-320 on an openSUSE 11.1 server with gigabit connectivity to the same subnet as the DNS-320. The command above automatically checks system memory and uses twice that amount to run a valid filesystem performance test. Here are the results of the test:
Using uid:0, gid:0.
Writing intelligently...done
Rewriting...done
Reading intelligently...done
start 'em...done...done...done...
Version 1.01d ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
-Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
icebox 4000M 15810 2 10684 2 28914 4 119.5 0
icebox,4000M,,,15810,2,10684,2,,,28914,4,119.5,0,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Conclusion
For less than a hundred dollars, the DNS-320 is a good storage solution. Performance-wise, this small NAS will not win any awards. But for the money you are paying, it offers useful capabilities. It is fast enough to be a practical backup solution for your home PCs. The initial configuration is unnecessarily complicated for a home network that doesn’t use a DHCP server. The DNS-320 should have been configured to fall back to the default management interface IP address if DHCP was not found.
The cheap plastic cooling fan cannot be easily replaced, which is a pity, because it looks like something likely to fail. The small, overheating power supply made in China by the Asian Power Devices, Inc. looks like something that will fail before or shortly after the cooling fan. But the power supply should be simple enough to replace.
Whatever goes first is not that important. My point is that even with RAID 1, your data is far from secure when using such low-end storage systems. The solution is to either upgrade to a storage system that wasn’t built on a twenty-dollar budget, or to increase redundancy by adding more cheap NAS systems to your network to spread out the risk.
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Hi,
Thanks for the review.
One point I am not clear on – if you have it set as Raid1, why are you saying your data could still at risk? I get your view that the NAS box is cheap and you feel the fan or PSU may fail but I am not understanding how your data is still at risk.
Could you explain a bit more as I brought my NAS and 2 x 1TB drives on the basis that having a mirror, I should be safe of never loosing my data should a drive fail.
Thanks
Rich
Rich, I have been working with high-end data storage systems for almost twenty years now. I have seen failures that, statistically speaking, should’ve been almost impossible. A Sun 3500 RAID5 array lost four disks in less than two hours once and data had to be recovered from backup tapes. It turned out that the disks came from a defective batch. An HP SAN RAID1+0 system failed with data loss because of a firmware mismatch between two fiber channel disk controllers. And I have many more examples like this. There is a reason why many businesses spend millions on modern data storage systems, but still run weekly backups using tape machines that are two decades old.
RAID1 protects you from a single disk failure, provided that all other components of your disk array are functioning as expected. They don’t always do, especially when you are dealing with something this cheap. I assume you bought two identical hard drives – same manufacturer, same model, same production batch. They were probably in the same shipping crate on its way from Taiwan when it fell off the back of the truck. Or, let’s say that little cooling fan in the back of your NAS fails. The first disk overheats and fails. And while you are sleeping, the second disk does the same. There are many scenarios where a RAID1 system can fail. So “never losing my data” is never gonna happen. You just need to decide how much this data is worth to you and spend accordingly.
This review is BS. The author states that he and his buddy are professionals with many years experience. I don’t doubt that.
I never really learned to use Linux or Unix. I know how to change directories and use “ls -all” but I haven’t seen any Linux release in at least ten years.
I have almost no networking experience, but I know what DHCP is.
This device was a little trouble to set up due to my lack of experience, but I had it going in a very short time. I believe most of that time was during the formatting of the drives.
You DO NOT need a DHCP server to configure this device, I didn’t have one.
The only problem I have with this device is the very slow speeds.
Tom, as they say, little knowledge is a dangerous thing. If you were able to connect to the web interface of your DLink NAS, then you have DHCP server. Do you have a Comcast or Verizon router/ cable box on your network? Of course you do have something like that since you can connect to the Internet. Well, they run a DHCP service by default. So that’s how you could connect.
Well, I should have been nicer. It’s easy to “lose control” after reading so much false information on the net from the so-called “experts”. Not just about this, but about everything.
I understand DHCP and I was not on any network when I configured this unit. I was setting it up and testing it out before I connected it to my router or my network in any way.
You are exactly right, “little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” You had little knowledge about this because you didn’t read any of the documentation. If you had read it, or even quickly skimmed it, or searched it for “DHCP”, then you would have quickly found out how to connect to it without DHCP.
Under “Section 2 – Getting Started”:
“When first powered on, during the initial boot sequence, the device will wait to be assigned an IP address via DHCP. If it does
not receive a DHCP assigned IP address the Auto-IP process will assign a 169.254.xxx.xxx address to the device If you want
to change the IP address before logging in or are unable to connect to the ShareCenter® IP address, you can use the Storage
Utility provided on the product CD to locate the device on your network and make any needed changes.”
I didn’t read the manual, I just ran the setup utility and quickly configured it. I first looked at the manual about two minutes ago. It was a quick and painless process to take out of the box and configure. Also, the default timeout for mine was 60 minutes.
Tom, this “auto-IP” process must be something that was introduced in later firmware version. The user guide that came with my DNS-320 does not have this information. I did the same: connected the NAS to a private network and tried using the Storage Utility to find it on the network. Unfortunately, it did not work, resulting in the effort of configuring a DHCP server.
Also, you can change the Volume names, you aren’t stuck with “Volume_1” and “Volume_2”. I did just check into this although I changed mine when I first configured the unit. It seems that these could not be changed before firmware v2.00.
dude.. your a trip.
Thanks for the review and comments. I just bought DNS-320 and install with a 3TB WD Green HDD. It took a long time for the NAS to format the HDD without and indication if it is still running or failed. I do not want to interupt the formatting as it have been running more than an hour and does not seem to complete. May I ask normally it would took how long to complete a formatting?
I would let it run for another hour. Formatting may take some time. The time required to format a hard drive for most types of filesystems is not a linear function of the filesystem size. For example, if formatting a 1Gb filesystem took 20 minutes, formatting a 2Gb filesystem may take an hour.
Hello. Thanks for this, although I have some thoughts.
#1
“In Management -> System Management -> Power Management: disable HDD hibernation, enable power recovery, set fan to auto low/high, and leave power off disabled.”
This would be if ur NAS is used non-stop I’d say.
I have enable hibernation after 5mins, etc – defaults, just changed as u mentioned idle time for 55mins.
I rarely use the NAS, I don’t dl with it, yet
#2
I can’t get email notifitacions to work by chance… :\
How should it look?
I have interia.pl mail
P.s What would be best proportion for dl/up ? I have got very low dl speed with it. I have ~~ 720 Kb/s internet connection.
The manual for the DNS-320 is out of order. I’ve seen three versions of it today. All of them have Section 2 on page 6, with Section 3 on pages 7 to 19, then Section 2 on pages 20 and 21, following by section 4 starting on page 22.
On page 20 are the instructions on how to set up this device without using DHCP.
I have one of these DNS-320 units, tried to get on to technical support but they were unable to help, may you can. when you log into the DNS using the web interface, the interface on the right hand side only shows VOL_1 should it show 2 Drives. my reason for asking is how do i know if it is functioning correctly.
thanks
Gary
Sorry forgot to say that i am running Raid 1.
thanks
Gary
Gary,
If you’re set up in RAID 1, your drives are ‘consolidated’ into one drive. The fact that there are two drives is intentionally masked to look like 1 drive, due to the redundancy of your data across both drives.
All that to say: you’re fine.
Hi Igor. Thanks for the review.
I have purchased a DNS-320 for using it as a media server and for running scheduled backups. Because of your comments and other people’s opinions, I will have a second back up made in an external drive, just in case.
Before buying this device, I used to stream movies (720p) from an external WD My Book hard drive to my WDTV Live Streaming media player (with built-in wifi n) connecting the hard drive via USB to my wireless n router. All videos played flawlessly.
When I bought this device, I connected it to my router’s gigabit wired port and played videos on my WDTV. When I play videos from my network shares, they freeze after some minutes and some of them even stops playing. However, when I play from media server (UPnP), they play fine, albeit without displaying subtitles. Moreover, the files show up in non-alphabetical order and it is hard to browse through my movie collection.
I cannot understand why I could play videos from network shares of my WD My Book connected via USB to my router, and I cannot play them well from my DNS-320 via a gigabit wired network.
Thank you for your comments.
Hi
I am a happy user of nas d-link sharecenter dns-320 (pulse)
Usually I use this through its web interface, but since I’m
also a happy linux user that always prefers to use
software in command-line so I created a simple script
management p2p and other basic functionality(for now).
I created a Mercurial repository on Bitbucket to this address:
https://bitbucket.org/zakis_/dns-320-command-line
You can download it and use it freely, hopefully useful, for example via
to check your NAS remotely through a linux server.
I hope to use it than you think to help me to add new
useful features, in a short time to cover all aspects of the NAS.
Happy Hacking
z4k
My DNS-320 arrived yesterday from Amazon. I have found it to be a little quirky so far but then for the price maybe this isn’t unexpected. I have a macbook pro as well as windows machines – I downloaded the latest firmware and also downloaded the D-Link Storage Utility for mac which seems to work well.
After initial setup and all seemed fine until the connectivity to the DNS disappeared. (Oddly started after I changed from using wireless to ethernet from my macbook). Rebooting resolved the connectivity issue for about 5 minutes when the network connection would fail again repeatedly.
I resolved the issue by resetting the DNS and since then everything seems to be OK.
My final issue with the DNS is the time it is taking to copy files to it. I’m guessing that in RAID1 configuration copy performance is compromised.
“Surprisingly, not very easy at all. It took me – a senior Unix sysadmin – and a colleague – an experienced network admin – about two hours to get this little box working”
This is a bias review from someone claiming to be an expert. I got it hooked up, and ready to go in 30 minutes with 2x 500Gb HDD for testing.
I had my FTP access working, and toyed with the internal Torrent App.. All in all, took me 1 hour from setup to having my wife come in to transfer her work files in.
Your difficulty in setting up is crap. You know you HAVE to connect this to a router. it’s even SHOWN on the box. What are you talking about?
If you are going to review a product, please be professional about it. This box may be inexpensive, it’s still a 800Mhz x 128Mb based solution that is affordable to many who may not need to shoot the roof with a Synology 1.6Ghz based NAS.
I am not saying this is the DNS320 is the best in the world. But it’s definately not as crappy as you put it.
I have to connect it to a router? No shit… Does the router have to run DHCP? Mine doesn’t. Not all networks were built for downloading porn and watching Tivo. Sorry to disappoint.
and not all NAS’s are built for corporate networks that are vlan’d off with no dhcp servers. This NAS is built for a home environment. So yeah, definitely networks with dhcp for downloading porn and watching Tivo. Only you apparently do that on a static ip. Good for you. How stoic to be managing all your ip’s by hand… very hairy hand.
Well, if managing a few IPs on your home network is too complex for you, then, by all means, buy your hardware at Best Buy.
JB,
I think Igor is referring to his seniority as in age. As in, ‘that senior citizen is a Unix admin’. Rather then a seniority gained from using ones brains for an extended length of time.
k
hi,
I have set up my NAS as a raid 1 hard drive, i need to backup 500 gb of photos and require a “mirror image”. The NAS has 2 x 1TB seagate hard dive installed.
I Copied 120GB of data to volume 1 and went onto the management system to check the exact same amount of data had been copied to volume 2.
Questions being:
Should i be able to see 2 volumes? as per your comment above i should only see 1?
If i should have 2 volumes do i need to schedule a local backup to mirror the data? (i was under the assumption this would be automatic??)
When i look on my shared devices on my mac i can see 2 seperate DNS 320’s, although both have the same 2 volumes and data?
Thanks, as im sure you have guessed this is my first NAS, I bought it specifically for the ability to have a mirrored backup to ensure i dont lose my data. If you dont consider this fullproof what are your recommendations?
Hey, I’ve been asking around but not much answers. So hopefully you can help me out here.
I used to configure the DNS320 well, with everything running but recently I can’t even log onto the WEBUI. I tried typing in the IP address but it generated an error instead – “This webpage is not available.”
The path that I designated for the NAS is still marked in ‘My Computer’ and although the folders are still there, the files in it are gone and some even marked grey.
I’ve restarted the NAS and PC and router altogether but to no avail.
I have a feeling that I just have to allow my router or something to talk to my NAS again but I am not sure how to. Or did I accidentally change my IP address of my router or PC thus this happens.
I sincerely hope you’re able to help me out here please!
Thank you :)
What lolz!
“.. (simple case: rsync running on a Linux box NFS-mounting volumes from DNS-320 or just have two DNS-320s cross-backup data to each other) to mirror your data between the DNS-320 and another network storage location. This would be more secure than using RAID 1 on a single DNS-320.”
Running rsync constantly across your network is more secure? Would that be running it every minute to make it extra secure, or maybe every 10 minutes for less security but more usability of your network and nas?
This is perhaps one of the most retarded things I’ve read all day. If you can’t figure out that if the NAS blows up, you can just yank one of the drives and mount it on a regular linux box, you shouldn’t be doing reviews, Mr. ‘senior Unix sysadmin’. Probably on HPUX.
Wow!
You really completely misunderstood the reason for running rsync between two NAS devices. It has nothing to do with security but with data integrity. You run it as often as you need to keep two devices synchronized. If one of your NAS units completely fails (such as RAID controller failure or some firmware bug that renders your RAID set unusable), you will have a more or less up-to-date copy of all data available on the second NAS. In fact, DLink NAS devices have the network sync capability built in. I just prefer to do this from the client side because it gives me more control over rsync options. Perhaps you are looking for retarded in all the wrong places.
So someone is expecting to run a professional workstation storage with a less than $100 NAS. How cute.
“Professional” does not imply “expensive”. As Stalin said, quantity has a quality of its own. Cheap NAS systems allow you to make many copies of your eggs and put them in many baskets. They may be cheap, but they won’t all fail at the same time. It is far more risky to put your confidence in “professional” storage just because it cost you an arm and a leg.
This is the perfect website for anyone who would like to find out about this topic.
You know so much its almost hard to argue
with you (not that I actually would want to HaHa).
You definitely put a new spin on a subject which has been discussed for ages.
Excellent stuff, just wonderful!
Hey there! Do you use Twitter? I’d like to follow you if that would be okay. I’m undoubtedly enjoying your blog and look forward to
new updates.
Hi
This was actually quite a helpful review and contained a lot of useful info. I particularly liked the author’s patient and polite replies to the trolls who featured with their half-cock smart-ass comments. As an IT professional (for over 30 years) I agree that simply having RAID 1 is not a guarantee that your data will survive. The recent devastation in our City (Christchurch, New Zealand) illustrated that quite well. One of my clients had a a system running three disks in a RAID 5 volume. Two of the drives did not survive. Fortunately we had a tape backup off site and were able to restore the system. For this reason a strategy of having geographically separated NAS units (be they cheap or expensive)is a realistic solution.
Keep on blogging!!
Hi,
I am using D-LINK DNS-320 as my file sharing network storage.
Now i am have the problem to access to the file. the pop-out message show as below when i try to open the hard-drive:
An error occur while connecting to M:to\\10.0.0.3\volume_1
microsoft Window network: the network path has not found.
this connection has been restored.
i cant even access it through the website.
Can anybody help me to fix this problem. Thanks lot.
Hey,
I had a similar problem with my 320… I use my laptop (Win 7) on a domain during the day but have my nas on a homegroup. After I got that message, I removed the network path and re-mapped but selected to specifiy diferent user details. Path was 192.168.0.32\Volume_1 which was the default for me and username was nas\administrator
I hope this helps,
Will.
Hi,
I have read your article and is very intresting!
I have buyed the D-LINK Nas few months ago, but is really slow in download-upload of files!
I have tryed via-ftp and nothing changed (it is about 1mb/s) and via share (it is about 5mb/s).
Network is a simple network with a Router with 100mb ports.
Any hints? Why it is so slow??
Forget to say, I have tried to transfer via FTP with a CROSSOVER LAN CABLE and I got the speed of your test (about 25-22mb/s).
Is not strange ? I mean was attached directly with two gigabit lan port (one of the Nas one of the Macbook).
Hey,
I have a couple of DNS-321s (each with 2x2T drives)and just bought a DNS-320. I’d like to create a couple of RAID 1 boxes by adding a new drive to an older, with data content, drive.
This may be a silly question, but, if I removed a drive out of one of my 321s and put it in my 320, will I loose any data…will the 320 format my old 321 drive or will it recognize it as an already formated drive?
dhcp server from where my interface got the lease on Linux.
It’s just a little problem but I’m just curious…
Whenever I log into my router’s setting and “check the interconnection” the DHCP server can not be found. However when I try it a second time it can be found. It goes on in this patteren for ever!
Is there anyway to fix it?
I have a Windows 2000 server connected to a hub. I also have about 20 Windows XP machines (clients) connected to this hub as well. I also have a Netgear firewall, which is connected to both a cable modem and the hub.
The Win 2000 server has IP 10.100.100.1, and the Netgear firewall has IP 10.100.100.141.
Right now, what I’m doing is going to each client and configuring the Default Gateway entry manually. What I’d LIKE to do is have the client’s IP settings set to “Obtain IP Addresses Automatically” and have the Netgear’s IP address come up automatically.
I’m assuming this can be done on the Windows 2000 server, as it’s the DHCP server on the network, but I have no idea how to do it.
Could someone give me a step-by-step on how to do it?
Also, is this the best way to get my network to have internet access? Right now, each client loses internet access about every 10 mins, which a “repair” will fix, but it happens so regularly that it’s getting to be disruptive. Tnx for hlp!
i have a dhcp server i have to configure it to provide the automatic ip to other subent. i know it can be done by dhcp relay agent but how to configure it. plz reply anybody