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Product Description

The D-Link 2-Bay Network Storage Enclosure (DNS-321) is the perfect way to store, share, and safeguard your documents, music, videos, and photos. With the D-Link tool-less installation, easily insert up to two SATA drives without any tools or attaching any cables. Additionally, the built-in UPnP AV media server enables streaming of digital content to compatible network media players as well as popular media player applications used in computers.

Customer Reviews:

• Easy To Configure, Works Well - Recommended
  We bougt the D-Link "DNS321" to use as a network RAID 1 drive (data protection mode) after a power hit took out one of my older hard drives.
  
  Setup was very easy using the included software and easy to follow instructions. I had my two Western Digital 1TB SATA 32MB Cache Green Power Bulk/OEM Hard Drive WD10EADS installed, configured, and online in roughly 15 minutes. Really very smooth!
  
  It should be noted that the unit does not have a USB or Firewire connection, as this is a network drive only!
  
  Highly recommended!...more info
• A Good Place to Backup Data
  I will admit, I am not nearly as tech savvy as most people reviewing this product, so my statements are based on my own basic observation and knowledge. I purchased this device after feeling the need to have the presence of a backup storage device on my home network. Overall, I am satisified with this product and do not regret its purchase, but I feel that some improvements could be made.
  
  PROS:
  - Connection in a home network is easy to establish. I simply plugged it into my router, ordered the router to assign a static IP address, and my computers could all see it. I can't recall, but there were a few tweaks I had to do on the device itself, such as install and format the hard drive, but they were easy. I had a hard time getting the new network drive (I call mine N:) under the "My Computer" section on my Windows XP computer, but Vista had little issue.
  - FTP server feature is fantastic. I often access this device from my work computer (8 miles away) to stream music and video stored here. Transfer rates seem very fast. I even connected to this device from Europe without a single problem. I'm not sure what security problems I am causing by doing this, but I keep the router security settings very high to prevent intrusion. One thing I would urge users of this feature to do is specify a non-standard port to prevent random IP searches from finding your FTP server. Additionally, and as always, password protect.
  
  CONS:
  - Unit can get noisy at times. Noisy is a difficult measure to make, as one person may not be bothered when another is, but I find the whirring fan at times to be a nuisance, but not aggravating. This can be alleviated by keeping the unit in a cool place. I have a laptop, so I cannot judge how loud it is relative to a desktop computer.
  - Adding/replacing new hard drives requires reformatting of the entire unit. This is really frustrating, as you simply cannot format an individual drive. I am not certain if this is still true, as there may be firmware to take care of this, but I had to do this when installing the unit. My advice is to double-check.
  
  MIXED OPINION:
  - Software to backup files is so-so. I personally did not like what came with the unit, so I found Syncback software on download.com and am using that on my computers. There may be better ones out there, but this was all I could find at the time.
  
  Overall, I like having this unit, as I feel it is doing its job well in securing my data. While it has its flaws, I do not feel that they complete impede its operation. I would recommend this device to someone seeking a network file storage system....more info
• D-Link DNS321 2 Bay NAS
  First, a qualifier, I don't work for, have an interest in, or know anyone that might benefit from a good or bad hardware review :)
  
  Initially I bought a Western Digital Mybook 2TB World Edition NAS. I was very dissapointed with the speed and the overly complex setup using third party limited edition software for access. Even though I bought it deeply discounted it was not usable so a waste of money. It performed so poorly I can't bring myself to sell it to someone else.
  
  I then bought two 1.5tb SATA drives and started looking for a NAS case. I received an add for the DNS321 from another on-line retailer and after shopping bought here. I have owned some D-link products in the past and been happy and after reading a couple of reviews got my credit card out and ordered.
  
  The product is great. It is really easy to use and setup. The front slides up to reveal two slide in bays. I inserted and seated the drives into the bays (no cables or connectors to worry about, the drives seat themselves into rear connectors when you slide them in.) I attached the DNS321 power supply, connected it to my router, and used the software to find it from my PC. The software searches your local network for the device and only needs to be used once. I asigned it a drive letter and was up and running.
  
  Initial software configuration was easy. I chose RAID 0 for speed and capacity, although other options are available. Formating took a long time, but that has nothing to do with the DNS321, 3tb is a lot of formatting. When formatting was complete it was time for the real test, speed.
  
  I dragged about 400gb of media files onto the drive and was pleasantly suprised at the speed of transfer. This thing is exactly, and maybe a little better than what I was hoping for. I now have all of my home's PCs and my media center attached to it and can share my mixed media files. I have not tried it's network capabilities, as I have no reason to access files remotely, so I can't speak to how well that part of the device works.
  
  It is compact and attractive. The blue indicator lights against the black case give it an appealing glow on the shelf next to the router. It has been running in my house for more than a month with no problems.
  
  Although I have been using computers since the late 70's and would consider myself expert in some areas, networking has always been a weak spot for me. This device was really easy to setup and I think anyone but a complete beginner would be able to use it with no problem. I would recommend this to anyone looking for home NAS....more info
• Small business? stay away from this one
  I bought this to test as an inexpensive file server in a small business, so I cannot comment about the UPnP server, FTP server, etc.
  
  The unit ships with firmware v1.00, but that firmware has problems (RAID, large drive, fan settings, etc.) that are well documented, but firmware v1.01 was released in October 2008, and was supposed to fix those issues.
  
  I immediately updated the firmware to v1.01 and began to test the RAID for reliability, etc. It turns out that v1.01 broke some important items for me - most notibly the permissions. As soon as you create a single user, the ability to select "All accounts" disappears. Further, every time you reboot the unit, you will lose all of the permissions that you set up. This is a bug, and D-Link is well aware of it since early November 2008 - you can read about it on their forums. It is now early March 2009, and they have not released an updated firmware.
  
  I have it turned off and sitting on the shelf waiting for a new version of the firmware. If they fix it, this could turn out to be a nice unit, but until then, stay away if you want a reliable file server with RAID for a small business.
  ...more info
• Ridiculously easy to set up and use
  Although I am capable of troubleshooting network attached devices, I don't really want to at home, I just want to store my crap and forget about it. This device requires the extreme bare minimum of effort to use, pretty impressive really. The unit required literally 15 minutes to set up and get working. Most of the time spent was unpacking the unit and the hard drives.
  
  Once it's unpacked and plugged in to your power and your network, all you need to do is run the supplied software from the CD, set your password and choose your disk arrangement. It picks up an IP via DHCP and advertises itself as a UPnP device, so by the time you get the setup disk running, it's already visible on your network (provided you have a standard home router setup going on).
  
  It's super quiet, blends in quietly with the office decor and only has one button to worry about. I've only had it for a week an a half, so I can't speak to it's longevity, but so far the performance is good and I haven't had a single problem.
  
  UPDATE
  
  As many have noted here in the reviews, this device loses its share and permission settings when you reboot. It took me a while to notice this since I leave it on all the time and don't use share permissions at all. This is a very annoying and perplexing bug. I find it hard to believe that something this important would slip by the QA process at Dlink. Thumbs down for that and for not having a firmware update to fix it yet. It's been out for ages already....more info
• Might have been good, but was defective
  Just got my DNS321 and was going to set it up. Right side drive went in fine. Left side would not take drive due to left to drive rail being welded in wrong place. It was off by about 1/16 of an inch and did not have enough clearance to insert the drive. Had to return it....more info
• Very Nice!
  I was very satisfied with the construction quality of this box along with the ease of use! The Drives are also hot swappable which makes it easy to replace drives if they fail with Raid 1! I get about 15 MB/s on average over a gigabit network. I'm useing two 1 TB Western Digital Green Drives and this thing runs quiet an cool! What's not to like! Note: Make sure you upgrade this box to the newest Firmware before you do anything!...more info
• Great product
  Easy to setup. I used 2x500G in Raid format. Very easy to setup for non-tech guy....more info
• Easy and reliable
  The DNS321 was ordered in November, there were no problems with shipping or the product. For what we use it for, it behaves as advertised. We have multiple users configured each with their own permissions, the device is attached to our house's network, and we read from/write to it as a mapped drive in Microsoft Vista.
  
  Our family pictures, music, and other documents are safely stored on this product. The enclosure makes it easy to store it elsewhere in the house, in a more secure location; if anyone were to come in and steel the computer I feel safe they would not take our family memories with them. This was our primary motivation for buying the device.
  
  It was easy to setup, the drives I purchased were those recommended by D-Link from their website (2 500GB drives). I have it configured such that each of the drives is a mirror of the other, if one were to fail the data should not be lost.
  
  As I see it, the cost, security, ease of use all add up to a product that is hard to beat. Anyone dealing with digital photography, large amounts of documents, or music should take a serious look at this product and what it provides.
  
  I would also recommend a small Uninterruptible Power Supply for this product.
  ...more info
• AMENDED: Now it is wonderful
  UPDATE (12/6/08):
  I now own 4 of these. With the new 1.01 Firmware not only were all the quirks resolved... but they now support my 1.5TB drives. The formatting scroll bar weirdness is eliminated.
  
  
  ORIGINAL REVIEW:
  Has a few quirks. DLink knows about them. No firmware updates yet. Software wants you to run a program to get to Drives Web Interface. Silly. When used in RAID 0 mode lots of folks have issue with drive thinking RAID isn't set up properly. Seems to be a false error. However, the drives web based utility won't allow access past this error screen. You can get around it with a direct link to other then the entry page of the drives browser screens. Once you get it setup I can copy files to the drive while streaming DVD movies to 2 other PCs at once. And I'm only on a 100T network.
  
  Clean up the software & FIRMWARE and I'd give it 5 stars....more info
• Works great... works for the mac too
  
  I use this on my network with PC's and Mac's .
  
  The mac just sees it as a network drive and mounts it. Easy web based setup.
  
  The itunes server on it works great! Just load your mp3's and all the other pc's and mac's will see those songs in their iTunes....more info
• STAY AWAY!
  I ordered this item along with Two WD 1TB HDs. I was able to format ok and map the drives; then overnight the unit died. i have attempted sending at least 5 emails from the online form on the Dlink support site and called 4 times to their support line. I bought the unit in the US but because i don't LIVE in the US or another company that they sell in; they will NOT help me. I will never EVER buy anything from DLINK again and would HIGHLY recommend not to buy from them to anyone who cares to ask. I understand that a defect can happen; but to have NO support because of my area code on my phone number on a new item that i bought in the USA is absolutely positively ludicrous.
  
  the unit seemed to be dead; but later i realize that the lights were out but the oven was on; it was COOKING my new 1 TB drives. they were too hot to even handle. I only hope that these are not smoked as well because of this NAS device.
  
  Mike Power
  UNSATISFIED DLINK PURCHASER...more info
• Amazon & D-Link, A Good Combination.
  The unit was well packed and arrived in perfect condition. Setting up the Network Storage Enclosure was a breeze. The software and directions were very clear, even when setting it up in a RAID configuration....more info
• Excellent NAS Enclosure
  Took me less than an hour from opening the box to format completion. Tossed in two WD 1TB Green Drives, formatted and was off and running. A note to those looking to use these with a PS3 or XBox 360: You will need to upgrade the firmware so the devices can read files on your drives....more info
• Great storage, lousy itunes server, lousier support
  Updated rating: 3 out of 5 stars for the lousy software and lousier support. Anyone needing to use the supplied itunes server should think twice about getting the DNS-321/323 as it is more grief than it is worth.
  
  I upgraded my firmware to 1.01 right away so some of the issues mentioned by others never hit me. I use it for general file storage, backups, and my itunes library. It was very easy to set up with two 1.5Tb Seagate Barracuda drives (latest firmware as well) in RAID 1 mode.
  
  Everything works really well except for the itunes server. It does not serve up ANY of the playlists I have created. There are about 4 what seem to be default playlists and they only have mp3 files in them. Since 95% of my songs are in one of the Apple formats even these are not helpful. None of the itunes playlists are visible either on my XP laptop via itunes nor on my Roku Soundbridge network media player.
  
  Other than that this unit gets 5 stars for value and performance.
  
  UPDATE: After spending several hours with D-Link Tech Support (who gets generally 1 star) and escalating to someone whose initial response to anything was not "reboot your PC" determined that their iTunes server would NOT serve up playlists, just the songs themselves.
  
  Ran into another issue: after I re-ripped about 2/3 of my library to a higher res format the iTunes server stopped working altogether, and would hang when refreshing the library at 38% consistently. Now it turns out that there is no logging or debugging AT ALL. I then installed Firefly on my laptop, turned debug up to 9 and discovered that some of the "silent" tracks on one of my CDs was where things stopped in Firefly - track named [Silent].mp4a. I deleted all of them and Firefly is happily scanning the rest of my songs. I take at least another star away from my rating for the lousy software and support D-Link offers: I now give this 3/5 stars and am working on getting Firefly loaded onto the DNS.
  
  I really really wish a) D-Link would have stated the limitations in the first place, b) reviewers had mentioned some of these issues, and c) I had known that the QNAP 209, similar to this product at a higher price, had Firefly as its native iTunes server. From the reviews it got on Amazon I would have spring for the additional money because the DNS has wasted enough of my time to more than compensate....more info
• Great NAS for the Price
  If you are looking to add storage without the hassle of internal drives then this is a great device.
  
  The setup is easy and there are plenty of configuration options via an easy web GUI. It uses the EXT2/linux file system so fragmentation is not a problem.
  
  I have two 1 TB drives set in a raid 0 for testing purposes and this thing screams on a gigabit network.
  
  It is a very small and quiet and looks sleek.
  
  Overall this is the best home/small business diskless NAS system out there....more info
• Convenient Shared Network Storage
  We purchased this unit specifically for the RAID 1 redundancy protection. This unit is the only one that we have acquired in this price range where the RAID actually works. The unit was easy to set-up and configure, using the on-board web page as well as the "discovery" application, on both Vista and XP/XP Professional PC's. Another plus... the fan does a good job of maintaining drive temperatures (a major cause of drive failures), and the unit is easy to clean. Ours is in a severely dusty area. Just power down, eject the drives and vacuum out the dust, then pop the drives back in and you're good to go. The whole thing takes just a couple of minutes. Great job, D-Link....more info
• Best NAS for the money
  The DNS-321 from Dlink is THE BEST NAS FOR THE MONEY, hands down. Setup was easy and it even includes an iTunes server. I installed the new firmware from Dlink and it was up and running in minutes. The only problem I had was that the fan wires were slightly back into the fan too far. It caused a "clicking" sound on the fan. Using a small screwdriver to very carefully push the wires out did the trick. I'm giving a 5 anyway because I like the DNS so much over my Linksys NAS (which is a huge disappointment).
  
  I installed 2 Western Digital Caviar "Green" drives with 32 MB cache without problems. Formatting was done in minutes. Also, the fan on the DNS-321 only turns on as-needed, which is great for sound and energy efficiency. The Caviar's run really cool, too, so you may want to purchase a couple for a great combination. Everything is whisper-quiet, including the Dlink's fan now that I adjusted the wire. ...more info
• D-Link 321 NAS is ok, as long as it keeps running
  I had my first unit about 3 weeks and it just stopped working. Would not turn on at all, just shut back down. I called support, they advised that the HD setting for sleep mode is the problem! That is the first issue, how can that be an issue when the unit WILL NOT TURN ON!?!
  
  I finally got tech support to understand this and they shipped a new unit out to me. This one so far is working, I'm less than impressed so far. It's working but I have now been trying to enable the FTP seems when I do all my permission and access to folders get a grey X next to them when trying to access via local network! Undo the FTP settings and they go back and I have access to them. Strange.
  
  Another issue is that if you have separate folders for software, you can only set one user account to access one folder via FTP. Setting up a single user to access multiple folders on the network side is not an issue.
  
  Having the drives formatted with a proprietary format is ok as long as you don't ever want to access the drives if the unit fails!
  
  I'm still wondering if I made the correct decision. I'm hesitant to put all my eggs into this basket and keep my USB drives running and files copied to them just in case. Time will tell but this could be a better product....more info
• Nice unit for the price point
  A nice unit for the money, very easy to setup and use. Probably my only complaint would be that it does a nice job of spinning the drives down when not in use, but the unit fan seems to run most/all off the time for some reason. It would be nice it it would idle the fan when it's not in use. Overall I would highly recommend this NAS....more info
• unacceptable permission handling
  Some file permissions randomly changed to 000. Restoring the factory config resolved this but I don't trust my data in this product and it's going back.
  ...more info
• Love it!
  I love the D-link 321 it is the perfect backup system. Get one today!...more info
• DNS-321 Hard drive incompatibilities
  I have had the DNS-321 for several weeks now. I have upgraded the firmware as recommended and that process went without any problem. My network recognized the unit and I was able to format a Hitachi 320G drive. I have had big problems installing a Hatachi 1TB drive. After spending 4 calls on their support line, I found out there is only one drive over 1TB that has been tested as acceptable on the 321, it is the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 HDS721010KLA330 1TB* (my Hitachi had a different model number). There are NO drives over 1TB at this time that are guaranteed compatible with the 321. So buyer beware, I found this out the hard way. Hopefully this and other idiosyncracies will be corrected in future firmware updates....more info
• Very Good Deal - Best device
  Hi I bought this device from Amazon.com. 1. Very fast shipping. 2. Grate Price. 3. Easy to operate 4. Very good file transfer 10MB/s on 100 Mbit network, not on RAID just two separate HDD (compare to LinkSys NAS200 only 4.3MB/s on RAID). 5. Good FTP server. 6. If you use iTune you will have and build in iTune server. 7. The network is 10/100/1000 Mbit. 8. Upgrade the firmware after purchase it will fix minor issues. 9. Uses NTFS File system and EXT2-Linux (so if you decide to plug the HDD on PC you will need only a driver to recognize EXT2) available free on internet.
  
  That's it don't hesitate just Buy it.
  
  I love it....more info
• 5 stars for nice features, overall 0 stars for corrupting my data
  Well, it was working fine for the features I was using. Immediately updated to their latest firmware release. Put 2 1TB drives in it, all the backup options (rebuild drive, etc.) seemed fine as I played around with swapping drives out. Then I tried to copy all of my current data over to this NAS box. After about a full day of copying (I have several hundred gigs of files) I went to check the status of the backup.
  
  The backup had completed... HOWEVER, since I had turned on data validation (rereads the destination and source files and compares after the backup) it noted that out of the 1000s of files I had backed up that 12 of them were "not equivalent to the source files".
  
  I took down the names of the files and then did a hex dump compare of the old and new files. To my surprise the files that were copied onto the NAS box had *exactly* 76 bytes of zero in very specific relative offsets in each file. It was always at hex offsets with the last 3 nibbles of the file offset being in the range of xfb4-xfff that were all zero, in all of the "corrupted" files.
  
  Puzzled, I did some Google searching and found that there was a Linux kernel bug found at the end of 2006 that just happens to exactly match this behavior! The kernel was losing the "dirty bits" (modified memory page indicators) when it was writing to ext2 or ext3 file systems (this box uses ext2). This only happened on certain "chunks" (76 bytes for the Linux case) if they were the 76 bytes that fall at the end of a 4k memory page boundary (the last 76 bytes of a 4k page are... you guessed it!! bytes xfb4-xfff).
  
  The data I was transferring was from a Windows XP machine and this NAS box is internally running.. yep, LINUX! I believe they likely have a version of kernel running on this thing that was silently corrupting my data, as all the issues seem to exactly match my conditions.
  
  That is the WORST kind of data corruption ("silent") because there were NO error indications at ALL except for when it had done the final recompare, which good thing I had turned that on or I would have NEVER known my data was being corrupted as it was copied to this NAS box!
  
  I notified the D-Link tech support people about this issue, and they responded back saying that they are looking into what is causing the problem (think I gave them a good enough head's up on this one!)
  
  I promptly returned the box to get my money back and am now running w/ a RAID 1 configuration in my main PC instead of having an external NAS box.
  
  Support notes - I stayed on the phone for the D-Link tech support number for a good 20+ minutes, all I got was the answering service kept repeating "due to a large volume of calls, ... " so I just hung up and emailed them instead. Took them about a week to get back to me (but they did).
  
  Other gripes about the box - the little levers to remove the drives were REALLY hard to use, my thumb got sore after swapping the drives a couple times for doing the failed drive testing.
  
  This review is specifically about the DNS-321 as that was the only one I tested, however the DNS-323 is VERY similar to this box (just basically added a print server), so I can't say if that one is any better or does the same corruption as this one does (it's quite possible)....more info