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[JohnSmith]

I recently purchased a couple of DNS-320's, and I moved a large amount of media onto one drive.  I have two identical drives in the unit configured in a standard arrangement without RAID.  Everything appeared to be fine as the directory was there yesterday.

My other DNS-320 I have scheduled to back up a folder from one of it's drives to my other 320 on the  drive that didn't contain the media.  Now today I noticed that the media folder is missing and is no where to be found.  The name of folder is called media, and there is no reference to that folder in the scheduled back-up settings at all so there shouldn't be any issue with overwriting it.  I'm sure I didn't set any flags to over-write anything either.

The puzzling thing is that I cannot find my media folder anywhere on the two drives at all.   I haven't removed any of the drives since installation, but we did have a power failure which left the unit off.  I had to manually power it back on, but it seemed fine.  I don't think I checked the media folder presence after that incident though so I don't know if that had anything to do with it.  I have now set it to return to it's normal operating status after a power failure in the menu.

Is there any instance where something might have been set to make the unit erase the other drive?  I'm a bit leery of the DNS-320 now that I've lost this large amount of data unexpectedly.  

[JavaLawyer]

This may be too simple an answer, but is it at all possible that you accidentally deleted the directory manually with a wrong mouse click? Do you have the "recycle bin" feature enabled on the DNS-320 that caches deleted items? If not, you should consider enabling this feature to protect against accidental deletions.

[JohnSmith]

Thanks for the reply.  I wish it was that simple, but I'm quite certain that I didn't delete the folder myself as there was about 40 GB of data that I transfered over to the 320.  Could you tell me how to enable the recycle bin feature?  I read about that, but I couldn't find out how to set that up.  On one of the drives there is a folder called ajaxpf with a recycle bin folder in it, but it's always empty even if I delete a file.

Also, is it normal for the unit to prompt for a username/password every time?  I've reset the network shares to allow all access without passwords, but the next day when I open up Windows Explorer to get to the 320, a username/password prompt pops up.  I've tried various usernames/passwords such as admin and "blank", admin admin, admin and my computer login password.  I finally tried guest with no password, and that allowed me access.  Is there a way to disable this?

If my computers have admin and a password on them, should I set the 320's admin account with the same password to have access without logging in to the unit?

[JavaLawyer]

To answer one of your questions, you can turn on the Recycle Bin through Account Management > Network Shares options. Edit the volume you want to turn the recycle bin on for and check off the "recycle" option. A new Share will appear under the NAS and when you delete files they will auto move to that Share. If you want to permanently delete the files then delete them from the Recycle bin. (This is not on by default).

[JohnSmith]

Thanks once again for the help.  It is much appreciated.

I did look into the Management, Account Management, Network Shares, selected Volume 1, Modify, went through the steps, but I did not find a recycle bin option.  In fact, after finishing the steps, the colourful circle appears and just keeps spinning like the interface is locked up.  Very odd!  Maybe I need to leave it spinning for longer?  I'll try it again.

I did end up adding a Group named workgroup with read/write access to see if that might skip the password request popup.  I'll have to report later to tell you if that helps.  (later) Nope that didn't do anything.  It won't let you add usernames admin or guest with a blank password either which I tried.

One other question, I did set up a DynDns account (for example purposes, not the real one - joeblow.dyndns.org)  to help redirect the work NAS to my home NAS.  I set up the account information on my home NAS with the login info, etc to update with DynDns.org the IP address.

The problem is that the work NAS unit won't allow one to enter the URL into the IP address field.  Maybe I'm out to lunch, but isn't the purpose of using a Dyndns address is to allow remote systems to locate the NAS if the dynamic IP changes?  The remote NAS works fine with backups when I enter the IP address in numerical integer form, but that sort of defeats the purposes of having a dyndns.org address doesn't it?  Am I not quite understanding this correctly?  (BTW I'm not a network IT specialist - just a joe blow end user)

[JohnSmith]

Just to continue here a bit:

[Regarding the Remote backups feature in Applications, it would be nice to have a box to select either incremental or complete backup plus a selectable destination folder.  As it is right now, it only gives you Volume 1 or 2.  It would be nice to be able to select a volume and be able to select or create a folder within that volume instead of just backing up to the root directory.  As mentioned before, the ability to enter a URL for a Dyndns address would be great instead of the integer IP address.] - update: I researched a bit more about RSYNC, and I see how it works now so I see there's no need for the complete versus incremental choice as it is able to compare differences and basically send over what's needed to make the two copies identical.  *** The remote path can still only be selected as Volume_1 or Volume_2 as no other directory choices or make new directory choice is available.

In addition, an email regarding the status of a remote backup would be great.  Or even a report log in the remote backup area saying yes the remote backup was successful and verified would be great.  How can you tell if the remote backup turned out okay?

Is there any other way to get a Dyndns address to work with remote backs up NAS to NAS?

Also, regarding the password request when accessing, what I've done is in Windows Explorer is to Map Network drive, enter in manunally \\dlinknas\Volume_1 and when it asks for the username/password, enter guest with no password, check remember my password (or something to that effect), and enter.  I hope that checkbox will make it persistent so next time it reconnects it won't prompt for the log in info.  I don't know if that checkbox only works for one session or persists.  Hope that helps someone out there.

Update - this does work, and it does persist the next day so for those with admin as their Windows account username, you can simply enter guest and nothing for the password, check remember my credentials or login info, and you should be good to go next time.  It's weird as before I did this, it wouldn't always ask for the login every time.  I could map the drive to other computers without a problem.  Further along, I noticed that the login pop-up started appearing so maybe it has a relationship to some other setting in the NAS that I did, but I didn't change anything about the wide open access so  it's puzzling.

[Jack Ryan]

I can't help with lost folders - I have not experienced that.

Regarding the Remote backups feature in Applications, it would be nice to have a box to select either incremental or complete backup plus a selectable destination folder.  As it is right now, it only gives you Volume 1 or 2.  It would be nice to be able to select a volume and be able to select or create a folder within that volume instead of just backing up to the root directory.

When you select a path, click "Volume 1" or "Volume 2" and the directory tree will open. Then select the directory (folder) you need.

In addition, an email regarding the status of a remote backup would be great.  Or even a report log in the remote backup area saying yes the remote backup was successful and verified would be great.  How can you tell if the remote backup turned out okay?

Good question. Mr D-Link?

Also, regarding the password request when accessing, what I've done is in Windows Explorer is to Map Network drive, enter in manunally \\dlinknas\Volume_1 and when it asks for the username/password, enter guest with no password, check remember my password (or something to that effect), and enter.

I would be careful with guest accounts and blank passwords - especially if you are looking at remote access. If you don't want to enter your NAS credentials evert time you access it, use a user name and password that is the same as your Windows logon. Windows will try the credentials of the current user before popping up the dialog.

I guess it would still work if your Windows password is blank but I would suggest that you make in non-blank.
Jack

[JohnSmith]

Thanks Jack for the reply.  Good point about the lack of password access.  I'm going to add an account to the NAS, and when I log in for each computer, I'll just enter that username and password and check the remember credentials or login info so it will persist next time.  My Windows account name is admin on all my computers so I did try to add an account under admin with the same Windows password to try for the auto-login, but the NAS doesn't allow you to use admin as a username.

If there is a remote backup created and viewable report somewhere in a future firmware, a total time taken would be nice.  That way I can coordinate daily remote backups and daily local backups without them colliding with each other.  As it is right now, I back up about a DVD's sized amount of data to my remote NAS, and that takes several hours.  I also have the standard format drives back up from one drive to the other, but it would be nice to do this local backup after the remote one finishes.

I know I could do RAID 1, but then I would drop from 4 to 2 GB in capacity while I just need to back up a DVD sized amount of vital data.  The rest of my data I would classify as non-critical.

Update:  Also, it would be nice to have a user selectable WebGUI interface port in the menu as my ISP blocks port 80, and my Linksys router does not have port to port forwarding so I can't simply forward port 80 to port 8080, etc so I cannot access my NAS's remotely.

[Jack Ryan]

John,

I would not consider Raid 1 as a data backup - it is a hardware backup (redundancy). If the NAS gets zapped or catches fire or gets stolen, both drives are likely to die.

Backups (there is no singular) should be secure but spread far and wide.

Jack

[JohnSmith]

Just an update if anyone is curious - RSYNC works rather well on this unit.  I was messing around in the middle of a remote NAS to NAS backup changing settings, etc, and even backing up local drive to drive, and the 320 seems to eventually pick up where it left off.  After checking the backed up folders, they match perfectly so this RSYNC remote backup system seems to work quite well.  It still would be nice to maybe see something in the log or have an email sent upon completion with backup details just for confirmation and peace of mind.

[JohnSmith]

I figured out how to add the recycle bin feature.  For some reason I had in my network shares section under "Management, network shares" the two volumes automatically showing up.  I tried modifying them, but every time it would show no recycle bin option and ended up hanging when I tried to complete the process.  I ended up deleting both items from the network shares list and started out blank.  From there when you click NEW, it gives you all the options including Map archive (not sure what that is) and the recycle bin feature.  Just a tip for anyone else having problems enabling the recycle bin.

[JavaLawyer]

I figured out how to add the recycle bin feature.  For some reason I had in my network shares section under "Management, network shares" the two volumes automatically showing up.  I tried modifying them, but every time it would show no recycle bin option and ended up hanging when I tried to complete the process.  I ended up deleting both items from the network shares list and started out blank.  From there when you click NEW, it gives you all the options including Map archive (not sure what that is) and the recycle bin feature.  Just a tip for anyone else having problems enabling the recycle bin.

Thanks for posting your solution to the Recycle Bin feature. I was wondering why the option didn't work for you earlier.

[JohnSmith]

I'm finding this DNS-320 has more than a few quirks with it's current V2.00 firmware.  I also think I figured out why I lost an entire folder of data.  I believe it's due to my remote NAS back up.  When I first set up my home NAS, I was testing it a bit so I uploaded a bunch of media to a folder on Volume_1.  The data was there, and I verified it copied over correctly from my computer.

I believe when I set up my remote NAS at work to back up my files to my home NAS, the unit actually overwrites the directory you specify and makes an exact copy of the folder you want to back up.  So if there are any folders or files in Volume_1, it will erase them!  In the remote back up schedule, I didn't have "Ignore existing files" checked so I think that tells it to go ahead and mirror the folder exactly.  I'm trying to check the "Ignore existing files" option to see if it will leave files alone.  That's quite a scarey option to overlook especially if you have loaded the volume up with data already!

If I am right in my conclusion, they really should put in quotes next to "Ignore existing files" something like "(enabling this option prevents any existing files/folders in the target directory from being erased or overwritten)" or at least have better documentation present that not checking it creates a mirror or exact replica of the folder being copied over.  If it's to the root directory which I think is the only choice all other files or folders will be erased.  I have not been able to change the target directory as it only gives you two options in a drop down window namely Volume_1 or Volume_2.  There is no directory tree that you can open up to select a different directory, or at least I have not been able to find one.

I am going to do some more testing tonight to try to confirm this finding.

Update - With the ignore existing files option, the NAS does back up without erasing any other folders or files present on the target volume.  Ignore existing files is worded fairly vaguely.  The default should be not to erase any files in the target volume, and the checked option should be "Erase all files in the target volume to create an exact mirror of the source directory."  That way people won't be wondering why their folders/files are disappearing as it will be quite obvious as they had to have checked the option to do so.

[JohnSmith]

Another quirk:  While using Windows Explorer, I noticed that I had a folder that I thought I deleted previously, but it still was present.  It was named Aug. 17, 2011 with a subfolder called IMG in it.  I tried deleting it with Windows Explorer, but it just wouldn't go away.  I ended up going into the DNS-320 Applications, web file server, and deleted it from there.  I also noticed an "invisible folder" which did not show up in Windows explorer so I deleted that too.

I think there's something not quite right in the file system as that shouldn't happen I think?  Another user who posted in the Beta Firmware section about a lost folder also found it using web file server as it wasn't showing up in Windows Explorer so he clued me in about web file server being able to work better with the unit.

[JohnSmith]

Is anyone's Recycle bin working on the DNS-320?  After enabling mine, it still doesn't save deleted files from Windows Explorer (Win7) or when deleted using the NAS's Web file Server application.  There is never anything in the Ajaxpf's recycle_bin folder.  Are there any other settings needed to make this work?

Also, is there a maximum remote backup limit that RSYNC is capable of?  I can do 4.88 GB of data fine over night, but 20 GB seems to give me FAIL errors in the task status.  Are there issues if the back up task doesn't finish before other tasks (eg. local to local drive backup) begin that might interfere with things?  Or if the remote back up is on a daily basis at 23:00 say, and the time needed to backup exceeds 24 hours, will that result in a fail if the unit wants to start the back up again before the last one finished?  Eg. Say one wants to back up 2 TB worth of data onto a remote NAS, if the upload speed isn't enough to finish that task in 24 hours, but if the unit is scheduled to do that daily, will it fail the backup?  If yes, I would say it would be nice for the unit to completely finish the first task and just skip the next scheduled backup until the primary one is done.  That way at least you get the main task finished.