Anyone using a D-Link DNS 323 NAS on their iMac?

[drgrafix]

Rather than plugging another FW or USB drive, I've been kicking around the idea of a network drive which would give me added capacity with 2+ drive bays, and not place such a burden on USB ports and USB expansion devices.

Price is a big factor, so I'm not looking to spend tons on the enclosure. Might start out with one (1) 1.5 TB drive and add a similar drive down the road. I also need to include files created on both macs and PCs.

Is this D-Link the way to go? Or would a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo be a better solution?

 

[AC Rempt]

I've been using on for a year or so as a backup drive. Not a Time Machine drive, but something I drag files and such over to. It works really well, and it shows up in the Finder's shared list, making it even easier to drag stuff over from wherever I am.

Right now, I have it set as a mirrored RAID of only 500 GB, but I plan to pump it up to 1 TB sometime soon.

It's been stable, it is quiet, but it's not fast. For the price, I think it's great.

I haven't used it with a PC, though.

 

[drgrafix]

I've been using on for a year or so as a backup drive. Not a Time Machine drive, but something I drag files and such over to. It works really well, and it shows up in the Finder's shared list, making it even easier to drag stuff over from wherever I am.

Right now, I have it set as a mirrored RAID of only 500 GB, but I plan to pump it up to 1 TB sometime soon.

It's been stable, it is quiet, but it's not fast. For the price, I think it's great.

I haven't used it with a PC, though.

Well... that's encouraging at least. Hard core speed is not my objective, but I would like to stream video to my Apple TV either wirelessly or hard-wired. Can you set that drive up so its not mirrored? I'd just like some bulk storage that is easily accessible from either OS.

 

[skorpien]

You can set it up as either RAID 0, JBOD or two separate drives if you don't want to set it up as RAID 1. I currently have one up using RAID 1 with two 1.5TB drives as a NAS/iTunes server. It's working wonders, but I haven't any experience with streaming videos to Apple TV off of it.

 

[zrodimel]

I use the dns-323 in an all mac network. Transferring files back and forth is really easy once you setup shares, like said before it shows up in finder. I also stream video to 2 PlayStations and it works great. If they're decent quality movies you might run into some issues doing this wirelessly but i can stream a 1.5GB movie wirelessly to my PlayStation without any buffer issues. I would think streaming to Apple TV would be comparable.

 

[drgrafix]

You can set it up as either RAID 0, JBOD or two separate drives if you don't want to set it up as RAID 1. I currently have one up using RAID 1 with two 1.5TB drives as a NAS/iTunes server. It's working wonders, but I haven't any experience with streaming videos to Apple TV off of it.

So you're using the DNS 323 with two independent drives... no RAID? Sounds like that's exactly what I want. How did you format it? Can you import/export PC files?

I use the dns-323 in an all mac network. Transferring files back and forth is really easy once you setup shares, like said before it shows up in finder. I also stream video to 2 PlayStations and it works great. If they're decent quality movies you might run into some issues doing this wirelessly but i can stream a 1.5GB movie wirelessly to my PlayStation without any buffer issues. I would think streaming to Apple TV would be comparable.

This sounds encouraging my main concern was being able to import/export/share pc and mac files from the same "unit" and I was even wondering if you could isolate one drive and format it NTFS and the other drive mac???? Is that dumb?

 

[skorpien]

So you're using the DNS 323 with two independent drives... no RAID? Sounds like that's exactly what I want. How did you format it? Can you import/export PC files?



This sounds encouraging my main concern was being able to import/export/share pc and mac files from the same "unit" and I was even wondering if you could isolate one drive and format it NTFS and the other drive mac???? Is that dumb?

I'm actually using my DNS-323 in RAID1 configuration, but I have in the past set it up as independent drives so I know that it will work.

All formatting is done through the DNS-323's webconfig utility (using a browser and entering the unit's IP address). With the current firmware (1.09 I believe), it can format the drives using EXT2 or EXT3 (previously only EXT2 was supported). There is an addon that supports NFS filesystems that you can download through D-Link's site, but I haven't played around with that.

Either way, you cannot take the drives out of the DNS-323 and connect them directly to a Mac or PC. That said though, the DNS-323 allows both Macs and Windows computers to access the drive using the SMB networking protocol. This means that both Macs and PCs can be set up to have full read/write access to the drive(s) and files can be shared between both. No need to format any NTFS or HFS+ (won't work anyway).

 

[drgrafix]

I'm actually using my DNS-323 in RAID1 configuration, but I have in the past set it up as independent drives so I know that it will work.

All formatting is done through the DNS-323's webconfig utility (using a browser and entering the unit's IP address). With the current firmware (1.09 I believe), it can format the drives using EXT2 or EXT3 (previously only EXT2 was supported). There is an addon that supports NFS filesystems that you can download through D-Link's site, but I haven't played around with that.

Either way, you cannot take the drives out of the DNS-323 and connect them directly to a Mac or PC. That said though, the DNS-323 allows both Macs and Windows computers to access the drive using the SMB networking protocol. This means that both Macs and PCs can be set up to have full read/write access to the drive(s) and files can be shared between both. No need to format any NTFS or HFS+ (won't work anyway).

OK, that sounds like a good solution for me then. As long as I can park PC and mac files on the HD and have access either way... that's cool. Probably go with Seagate Drives... had such awful luck with IBM/Hitachi in the past. If you don't mind, I may come back for advice LOL once I've got the hardware set up and if I run into a glitch... OK?

 

[mpe]

The best you can do when using this device with Mac is to install Debian linux on it. You can google how to do that. If you have a standard linux, you can enable netatalk+avahi and then the device supports Time Machine backups and AFP protocol.

On the other hand the DNS-323 is underpowered (small memory and slow CPU) and the transfers to the device are very slow. I would personally choose different device.

 

[drgrafix]

The best you can do when using this device with Mac is to install Debian linux on it. You can google how to do that. If you have a standard linux, you can enable netatalk+avahi and then the device supports Time Machine backups and AFP protocol.

On the other hand the DNS-323 is underpowered (small memory and slow CPU) and the transfers to the device are very slow. I would personally choose different device.

Don't really want to introduce yet another OS into my life or network at this time. Other people seem to be doing OK with this device. I already have a Lacie 1TB FW800 dealing with my mac's backups. I also just wanted to confirm that it actually works with the current Mac OSX 10.06.