D-Link DNS-343 Diskless System 4-Bay Network Storage Enclosure

Pros: Good looking box and good build quality.
Simple setup and operation.

Cons: From previous review from drkxx, bought this to work with 4x WD30EFRX red drives...He must never have tried a RAID configuration as it will only recognize 3T drives if they operate in Standard mode (As separate disks). the initializtion of the format for RAID 5 will fail and you will be like me, holding a lot of expensive drives and no home to be found for them.

Other Thoughts: It seems manufacturers want you to buy their product and therefore don't disclose full limitations of their product. There is no documentation stating this limitation of the NAS. After working up through three tech support levels to the specialized tech support of DLink, I was informed of this failing and that they did document it, if you look at the fine print in the firmware documentation a couple version back... my mistake.

Pros: Easy setup and installation

Cons: None noted

Other Thoughts: Product works great Using as a media server and no problems so far.

Pros: Easy to configure

Cons: Bought it with 2x 3tb seagates, tried for a couple of days to get it to format into a raid 1 for bays 1 and 2, no luck. Called tech support, after the usual reboot, pull hard drives routine was transfered to level 3 tech support who immediately told me that drives greater than 2tb are not supported. I am an experienced user/network admin the first thing I did before buying was research to make sure it supported 3 tb drives, didn't find any published limitations on the Dlink site. Subsequent to my purchase a notation has been made on the Dlink forums that 2tb is the max drive size.

Other Thoughts: 3 stars because out of the box it was very intuitive to use, but can't really rate any performance aspects

Pros: In theory, this should work well

Cons: AD integration is pointless. I have spent weeks and hours on the phone with support trying to get it to integrate with AD and it hasn't ever worked.

D-Link support is terrible. Very, very hard to understand and I don't even know if they know what products their company manufactures. Lacking any sort of technical knowledge.

Pros: None

Cons: Configured as RAID 5 with 3 1 T drives. After one failed I am not able to rebuild the Volume. The devise starts to rebuild the volume but when it claims that it is done, no data is showing. Lost 400 GB of pictures and lots of important data. Extremely upset.
DO NOT BUY UNLESS YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR DATA.

Other Thoughts: Don't buy Seagate HDD. They fail after 2 months...

Pros: I've used several NAS devices and have had the least aggrevation with this unit. Very useful for large backups. Works fine with 3tb drives.

Cons: Can get hot at times. Will run a bit slower than some NAS devices but not a big deal unless you're routinely moving large amount of data.

Pros: Easy to use , will take any size hhd, easy to config, nice color blends well, like the LCD info screen , does what it is advertised to do.

Cons: When adding a new hhd depending on the config, you'll have to reformat one or most of the drives. now & then the gate logs show fans fail.

Other Thoughts: A little pricey.

Pros: I have had this device for over two years and have not experienced any of the problems that some of the users seem to be having. There are no problems with overheating (filling volumes with 1TB truecrypt containers).

It is a great NAS from my perspective and would buy again.

Cons: I don't like that the OLED flashes "drive full" when one of the hard drives is 95% full. I would like to be able to turn that off to avoid the annoying flash.

Other Thoughts: I am posting this update to my original post to provide some insight into long term ownership of this device.

Pros: Cute OLED front panel.

Cons: - runs hot
- locks up because it runs hot
- pathetic tech support
- mediocre file sharing
- poor additional applications

Other Thoughts: I've owned one for 6 months. The first one was DOA (would not boot properly). The second has been OK - nothing special - until a week ago when it started locking up. I ended up putting it outside in sub 0C weather to finish backing it up. 3 long sessions with 100% scripted tech support (punctuated by multiple dropped calls) yielded no satisfaction whatsoever. I'd avoid this piece of... hardware if I were you.

Pros: Inexpensive, works ok.

Cons: Cooling- runs hot

Other Thoughts: Here's what I do to have the unit run cooler. Take the front cover off, all it really does is block airflow, and have a small fan blow into it. I use a smal Vornado fan. Now the temp seldom goes above 100, most of the time it's at 90-95.