D-Link DNS-343 4-Bay Network Attached Storage Enclosure

This was the first of two NAS devices I added to my home office which has over 30tb of online storage connnected to my laptop. First issue was that it continually reported 'power supply failure' until I figured out it does not like my surge protector. Second, since it uses a non-NTFS disk format, I can't just move a drive to a desktop or docking station and read my data. This is a good device if you need RAID storage protection, but I just need bulk storage that I keep backed up with multiple copies. My system connects twelve external drives so I have gone back to docking stations and strips witih multiple USB ports, all formatted NTFS for compatability.

I have bought 2 of these and they work without problems... both have 4x Seagate 1.5TB 7200.11, each NAS has a single partition of RAID5. The NAS shuts down the drives when idle, this is very good but I guess all NAS do this.The speed is not very high while transfering files to them (generally 12MB/s), but for me the most important is streaming videos at a good reasonable speed, even blu ray at 1080p stored there works without problems through a gigabit network.One reviewer said he could not see the drive with problems in the array and this is not right. The external display shows an error message and indicates which drive has problems. Also, the web interface can test each drive individually (even when configured in a RAID5 array). There's both a log test and a quick test. One of the drives I bought was not functioning correctly, and the quick test pointed the bay with the erratic drive (btw, Seagate exchanged the drive without any delay).I would give it 4 stars because it is just an average (good) product, but I think it deserves an additional star because, in my opinion, many reviewers were not fair and did not have a justifiable reason to give it one star.

Love my two dlink dns-323s but the dns-343 is a lemon. Never managed to format 4 drives into a successful raid 5 volume. They nicely replaced the unit but the second one was no better. The machine runs hot and I suspect fails due to heat, but it would randomly drop drives, build a volume then forget about it. Undocumented flashing lights on the panel, and unhelpful error messages (after an hour of formatting, at 100% complete it announced error 127 had occurred, then upon reboot it suggests I put the drives back in the correct order and refuses to do anything till i comply) etc etc. I wanted this to work - it's a cute box and the concept is great, but execution failed somewhere. Useless $500+ paperweight in nice brushed black metal that probably fried 4 perfectly (previously working) drives.

Pros:Set up from new disks was fairly simple.Sturdy chassisLow power consumptionGood web setup utilityRAID 5 supportEasy to mount in WindowsCons:Could never get Linux (Ubuntu) to automount the NAS. Only accessible through network locations.Sorta slow. Get ~2.4MB/s transfer rates over a 100 Mbps LAN.Couldn't reuse existing disks from an existing RAID 5 array. Forces you to format the disks. Presumably, if the NAS itself dies, you're SOL.Attached printer over USB sometimes didn't work.When spinning up from sleep, it spins up each disk individually. Takes ~30-40 seconds before it's ready on a 4-disk array.Overall, after using this NAS for a number of months, I got tired of the flaky printer port and slow response time and decided to rebuild my original file server. Soon, I'll be using this just as a backup device. It's a shame, because just an external hard drive could do the same thing and would be a lot cheaper.

I've been running the DNS-343 for approx. 4 months now and have had consistent issues with the device. I'm running a full bay of 4-2TB WD drives arranged in a RAID5 configuration.Everything seemed fine for the first week or so. After that I noticed that the status of my NAS had changed to "degraded" and the drive monitoring did not show drive 4 as present.Rebooted the NAS and drive 4 came back along with a 26+ hour resynch which caused massive freezing and glitching to any streaming media (essentially making the media unwatchable until the synch as done). Less than 1 day after the synch finished, the NAS showed as degraded again. Thinking my drive was dead I swapped it out. Luckily I didn't lose any of my data (as others on dlink's own forums have) but experienced the exact same issue as before. It would resynch for over a day then the following day or so it would be degraded with drive 4 missing. I had the original drive 4 tested apart from the NAS and all tests registered the drive as perfectly good.I searched dlink's forums and found multiple other people were have the exact same issue as mine. Unfortunately dlink has been of NO help in the slightest with this and the forums are pretty much just people crying... no technical help from dlink personnel at all.Then to top things off, at one point my RAID5 volume "disappeared". No reboots would recover it. The NAS recognized that there were disks in the bays but couldn't find the RAID5 volume anymore. It wanted to setup a new RAID or JBOD and reformat the drives for it (which would effectively destroy all the data I had on it originally). I was initially running firmware version 1.03, after upgrading to version 1.04beta I got lucky and the system found and recovered my RAID5 with all data. Unfortunately beyond that version 1.04b did nothing helpful. The NAS still shows as degraded, disk 4 missing, and resynchs for a day every time I reboot it. Plus now it appears the fan in the back is no longer running. Which is amusing considering that was a known issue that version 1.04 was suppose to fix. As a note the fan ran fine under 1.03, it was the 1.04b that killed it.There are only a few good points I can say about this device. Even though it was/is degraded I am able to add/remove and stream media from it fine (assuming it wasn't synching at the time). I connected a small usb printer to it and printing via the network attachment to the NAS works fine as well. I have never had an issue printing, though it seems to take awhile for the document to buffer through the NAS for some reason regardless of document type or size.I can not comment on the other features of the NAS as I have not used them, and don't really intend too. So I have not idea how well the iTunes server, UPnP AV server, bittorrent addon, ftp access, or remote backup run. I am using the NAS as a pure file server, and stream media off it through other outside computer media connections.This is a cheap 4-bay NAS and will probably work for you, but I am very highly disappointed with it (and with Dlink's response to it) and would highly suggest you look at a different NAS solution. I am extremely concerned with this consistently "lost drive" and the 26+ hour resynching that occurs every time the NAS powers down for any reason. I have since moved all my critical items to other areas and use this as "throw away" storage as I am fully expecting to completely lose everything on it at some point and not be able to recover it.**UPDATE**Thought I'd update this review as a new firmware version 1.5 came out. This firmware appears to have fixed all of my issues and the NAS is functioning as advertised!! My drives are no longer showing as missing or degraded. My mysterious fan issue (occasionally works for a month, occasionally doesn't for a month) has been resolved and they are running normally (turn on when device is under heavy use and warm, then back off when cooled down). Plus the day long resync seems to have dropped to nearly nothing... or maybe it isn't happening now... can't fully confirm which. Though after a reboot it does appear to do a quick scan for a minute or two, I have yet to have it take the day long resync anymore.Either way I am finally happy with this device. I've upped my rating to a 4 (refuse to go to 5 considering all the issues I've had with it) and am not nearly as concerned about future data degradation or loss. Seems like the firmware engineers for this D-Link DNS-343 have finally figured out how to properly run their hardware. So I free safe in recommending this product, with the understanding that when you get it you MUST IMMEDIATELY upgrade the firmware to the current version.

Got used off Amazon warehouse and it was Sent to me un reset called dlink and thay wanted me to pay them 50 bucks to tell me how to reset it thanks a lot Amazon. Also windows 10 doesn't lut u mont the drives untill u tell it its safe to

Great box if your using 2tb drives. had one for 2 years no issues but now i cannot upgrade :(

This was a decent purchase considering the price, but getting supported hard drives was the biggest hastle ever. I needed 3rd generation Seagates - the brand new ones were not supported. RAID1 gives a write speed of 15-20 MB/sec, but RAID5 struggles to get 1MB/sec.

J'ai tout d'abord eu des problèmes de connection. Après plusieurs test il a été déterminer que le probleme n'etait aucunement lié au fonctionnement du dns-343, mais cause par un mauvais disque dure. Donc en resume avec un disque dure western digital de type red, cette appareille fonctionnera parfaitement pour votre plus grand plaisir. Il est tres stable et fiable.

I have one configured on my home LAN with 4 X 2TB Drives (Product links are below). All were purchased at Amazon.ca. The first DNS arrived "dead on arrival" but Amazon did an amazing job to get me a new one within days through their return program. I packaged up the dead one and returned it to Amazon at no cost to me and with the help of easy to follow procedures. This was faster and friendly than walking into a bricks and mortar store! The DNS is configured RAID5 and offers total protection against the possibility of a drive failure. All of my photographs, music and other valuables are stored here. It even supports my ITunes Media Library and many other things I have not had time to explore yet. I had purchased a DMS321 earlier and was very happy with it. This solution in addition to my standard backup procedures, offers great piece of mind. I would recommend this to anybody who is looking for a simple to use, reliable and foolproof media storeage solution. It will protect your valuables. D-Link DNS-343 4-Bay Network Attached Storage Enclosure Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Black SATA 6GB/s 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD2002FAEXD-Link DNS-343 4-Bay Network Attached Storage EnclosureWestern Digital 2 TB Caviar Black SATA 6GB/s 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD2002FAEX

Super NAS parfait avec des RED WD pour conserver vos données