Customer Rating: 
Summary: Best budget NAS for home use
Comment: I have my unit with 2 X WD-500G RAID 1 setup for a month now and no any issue.
-- Solid built
-- very quiet (after upgrade firmware to 1.06,it shuts down the fan totally if temp is below 104F, great!)
-- easy setup, I have XP, XP+SP2 and Vista, all work fine.
-- great community (google DNS 323 wiki, check it before you buy!)
-- speed is also OK. I don't have any other NAS to compare, but it's faster then my shared disk from my other PC.
-- suggest to get a cheap APC UPS to protect the hardisk in case of power outage.
So it's a great unit for the price. ( Amazon price is too high. I got it from local store for $140 CAD)
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good hardware, maddeningly unpolished software/admin tools
Comment: Bottom line: gets the job done (although not very gracefully) for a decent price.
Great hardware, smaller than I expected. Physical installation nearly idiot-proof. Quiet. Relatively low-waste packaging. Probably the best value for a multi-bay NAS right now, all things considered.
BUT the admin tools are very version-1. Critical and basic oversights include inability to rename the shared disk (you're stuck with "Volume_1" like it or not) or configure email alerts for modern mail servers (no way to specify SSL or non-standard SMTP port, required by most spam-conscious ISPs). A host of other small but annoying head-slappers like that take a big bite out of the otherwise positive impression I have of this unit.
Clunky user interface reminds me of the early days of small routers before they hit the consumer mainstream and companies realized they had to hire someone to make things look right and work for average folks. Since more and more 'average' folks are indeed looking at NAS products, these admin/UI problems really need to be addressed.
The vibrant community of linux geeks/gurus out there with sites dedicated to hacking and enhancing this device is evidence of the 323's versatility and potential...and the shortcomings of its out-of-the-box features. Maybe D-Link should hire some of these talented people to exploit its potential.
Macs see and use the shared disk fine, and web-based admin tools are platform-agnostic. D-Link's Quick-Start CDROM and printed instructions are Windows-only, however, so if you're setting this up with a Mac you will have to take a few leaps of faith to get things up and running. It's do-able, but you're on your own.
iTunes server is fun in theory, but not sure it's worth the effort to set up and manage an additional music library when iTunes on my laptop shares itself just fine.
Not sure if drive mechanism would be readable in a standard USB/Firewire drive enclosure now that it's been formatted in 'EXT-2' format. That slightly concerns me should I ever need to abandon the Dlink box for some reason.
I thought this unit was unique by featuring "WAN" access. Turns out this functionality is by way of an oh-so-very-1993 FTP server. If you're going to open a port on your router to allow FTP access anyway, you may as well direct inbound SMB or AFP traffic to your NAS and access it as a shared drive. That technique will work with any NAS.
Prior to this purchase, I experimented briefly with an Apple Time Capsule and found both the admin tools and Finder/Desktop integration to be smoother for both Mac and Vista workstations. The D-Link box clearly has more features (not the least of which is a dual-bay enclosure), and I know RAID features are important to many NAS consumers. But since I already have a reliable offsite backup solution in place, if I had it to do over again, I think my modest home storage needs (and a desire for fewer electronics, cords, power bricks, etc) would be better served by the all-in-one TimeCapsule product.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great NAS, but Vista user watch out....
Comment: Purchased this NAS about 3 weeks ago and it works exactly as advertised with two terabyte drives. Bit torrent software in the current build is particularly useful. Unit is whisper quite, but has big blue lights that I wish you could dim. Biggest issue may not be Dlink's fault, but Windows Vista's. My primary computer is a Vista laptop which does not want to log on to the mapped drives from sleep or remember passwords. My XP machines work like a dream in this respect. Units other limitation, so I've heard, it won't turn on automatically after a power outage. In all it was just what I needed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Works Great!
Comment: I got this two weeks ago. Set-up couldn't have been easier. I bought two 1TB 32MB buffer drives to put in it set up to mirror each other for data security. I have four computers on my home wireless network and after copying the instalation software onto a thumb drive it was a simple matter of running it once on each computer. Now everyone has access and their own folders on the network. We don't have to mess around transfering files and data via thumb drive or CD-RW anymore. The i-Tunes server works flawlessly as well.
Customer Rating:
Summary: OK, but needs some improvements
Comment: I purchased this to take the place of an old LaCie external drive that was connected to one of my PCs, and to act as a print server (which that PC was already doing.) I wanted to be able to print, back up, and transfer files from my laptop without having to have the other PC running constantly.
I received the DNS-323 before the two Western Digital 500GB HDDs arrived, so I connected it to my router, connected the printer (HP DeskJet 1220C) and tried it out sans drives.
Setup was a snap - the device was detected by the EasySearch software provided. I changed the IP address (originally obtained via DHCP; I changed it to a static address). The unit saw the HP printer.
However, I couldn't print. It turns out (and this is NOT shown in any documentation for the unit) that the print server functionality requires a hard drive to be installed. Apparently the unit caches print data on a drive.
So I waited for the HDDs. When they arrived, I installed them (very simple), powered up the unit, and configured it for RAID1. It took about 30 minutes for it to format the drives, after which it restarted and was ready for use.
I was still not able to print, but found a solution on the dLink forum: Add a new local printer on a new Local Port named \\\lp. After doing that it worked fine.
All in all the unit seems to be working fine for storage. The Memeo Auto Backup software provided is simple to configure, runs in the background and performs near-realtime backups of changed files. (I also use SyncBack periodically to ensure things are staying up to date.) The unit is very quiet, does not get hot even after several hours of data transfer, and is unobstrusive on the desk.
The iTunes server works without a hitch - the unit shows up as a shared device in iTunes. I have not used the FTP server or any of the torrent download features.
Things went swimmingly until I installed the latest firmware, 1.06. The upgrade went fine, but after completion, I can't print. Still working on a fix for that (and trying to avoid downgrading the firmware.)
All in all I'm happy with the unit's file storage capabilities and data transfer rate. It remains to be seen how reliable the Linux EXT2 file format is, how well the RAID1 configuration maintains synch, and how stable the unit will be over time (I've only had it just over a week).
PROS:
- Small form factor
- Quiet, cool operation
- Very easy drive installation
- Simple to configure via browser interface
- Free Memeo Auto Backup software (which has been working well for me)
- Linux-based, and if you're inclined to you can "hack" into the unit and perform mods (promptly voiding the warranty)
CONS:
- Limited control of Print Server function (virtually none, actually, except for a "Clear print queue(s)" command)
- Spotty support from DLink - I recommend using their forums first, because actually talking to them on the phone is infuriatingly frustrating.
- No support for Gmail when using email alert function
- Firmware 1.06 upgrade broke Print Server
- HUGE power adapter
- File/folder security is limited, difficult to configure and non-intuitive. If you want serious security, this unit is NOT for you.
- No NTFS support
- No Linux EXT3 support, even though documentation and manufacturer's description claims it has this. EXT3 support was removed in firmware 1.05 (which mine shipped with).
I'm giving it only 3 stars because of the print server issues (a major reason I purchased this unit) and the lack of NTFS support (something not clearly indicated in the documentation). Since this is my first NAS device, I'm curious to see how reliable it will be and how long it will last.
I highly recommend a trawl through the DLink forum at http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?board=155.0 before purchasing this unit.
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