Nice little NAS

[richidoo]

A recommended a client put his company data onto a RAID NAS. He ordered a D-Link DNS-323 and shipped to me to setup. One of the disks was DOA, so while I wait to replace it, I am exploring the possibilities of using this NAS for streaming music. He would rather I try to break it now before his data goes on it.

The reviews are very good, and I agree. It is small and very quiet. The disk noise is louder than the small fan, so the thing can't be heard outside a couple feet. I have not tested the I/O speed yet, but I have streamed flac from it with no problem. It appears as a second volume on the Sonos remote when I browse by folder.

It ran warm when I was trying to format the dead disk which was clicking and groaning until the NAS finally puked it out. Since running with only one disk now it is cool to the touch, but I am not really exercising it.

It can run 4 configurations across 2 disks.
1. Two separate volumes
2. One combined volume
3. RAID 0 (striped for better speed)
4. RAID 1 (Mirrored for redundancy)

I don't think it can run slimserver. It does have an iTunes music server function, but I don't know what that does. It is very configurable for notification, power settings, security, etc.

With a pair of 750GB Seagate Barracuda drives the whole thing from NewEgg was $380.00.

More to come...
Rich

[miklorsmith]

So, it's not a computer and not strictly a hard drive - how would it be used in an audio server?

[mdconnelly]

I've done a fair amount of digging on various NAS devices.  You can find a lot of good info on smallnetbuilder.com. 

NAS for the home seem to fall into two categories.  The lower end (Dlink, Tagan,..) work very well as networked storage serving files to other computers on your net.   Yes, many have additional apps and may even claim more, but I don't think that is their primary role and performance is an issue.   As you move up the food chain, NAS from QNAP, Synology and others provide even better support of apps and more robust processing.   QNAP even includes SqueezeCenter among others.   

Personally, I decided that the lower cost NAS are better suited for what I need.  I have a separate Dell box with two large hard drives that I use for SqueezeCenter along with a myriad of other apps.  I've got a low-end NAS box that I use for backups although have successfully used it to serve flac files to SqueezeCenter as well.

[Black Sand Cable]

I run 2 of the DNS-323's. One is running 2 - 1TB hard drives which look after my movies and the second uses 2 - 1.5TB hard drives which looks after music. Both are running RAID 1.

I bought my first one almost a year ago and after flawless operation, it died. D-Link replaced it no questions asked. We had a power outage and when the power came back on, it never came back on and yes.....I lost one drive but the other drive was fine so I had no data loss.

They are a great little NAS box. They do what they are supposed to and given they run at Gigabit speeds, they move files across a network with decent speed.

I can stream movies and music to any PC in my house and to date I have had no issues. My Sonos system points to it and it works with zero hic-ups. You can in fact get it to run SlimServer but trust me on this, been there and done that and its not worth the trouble.

A few things to watch for is:

- They make some noise. Not much but they make some

- Stay on top of the firmware updates

- With 2 drives installed and active, the box gets warm

- When not in use, they go to sleep. It can take some time for them to wake up and become active on a network again

- Make sure that you power them down completely if you need to do something with them or else!

- I would strongly advise that they be run off a UPS as they do not like turning off unexpectedly

- Feed them directly into a router.....no switched regardless of if they are managed or un-managed

- Slower then shit to work with if you are trying to access them from a desktop that is running a wireless connection! This would be my one and only real gripe with these things

[richidoo]

Good to know about UPS... I will make sure to get that for my client's install. Even ReadyNAS hated sudden poweroff. Good to know it can stream video, that's fast enough for my needs.

The disks can be prevented from spinning down by disabling power management, but I imagine this will reduce their life. Max delay to spin down under power management is 30 minutes.

Nice website Dr Mike! smallnetbuilder.com