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[Tullaian]

I give up with this pos. 

I went and bought an external USB cage to put the drives into, and sure enough they had multiple corrupt partitions on each of them. I deleted the partitions on the drives and put them back in the DNS-323. Booted it up and it started with the request to format via RAID 1 ... which I did and guess where it hung ? Yep 94%.

The drives when I put them into the USB cage each had 3 partitions on them , 2 of around ~540MB and a 640GB or so one, all 3 of unknown type.

So I've now bought this device, 2 hard drives, an external single USB drive mount.. for a grand total of zero useable storage. 


All it has done after all that effort is to leave me again with ;

Total Drive(s):  2



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Volume Name:  Volume_1
Total Hard Drive Capacity:  737329 MB
Used Space:  24 KB
Unused Space:  737329 MB

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Volume Name:  Volume_2
Total Hard Drive Capacity:  737329 MB
Used Space:  24 KB
Unused Space:  737329 MB

It completely fails to create a RAID array and under the Tools>RAID section it is still stuck on ;

"Change the hard drive configuration or format the newly inserted 2nd drive. "

I have no idea if the drives are useable or stable as the device never completes formatting them and half the time when I power it up it prompts me to format the drives.

[Tullaian]

I just like talking to myself.

I believe I've fixed it. Though completely assbout how I had to do it.

Found post on a Linux forum about a similar problem being fixed by reverting to firmware 1.04. So downloaded 1.04 from d-link us site (not on aust site) , flashed back to 1.04. Reformatted drives under RAID, hung at 94% but when you click the broken link it continued on and said success. Drives display as single RAID 1 volume now.

However, device now inaccessible with easy search when you to to map the drive , comes up with login box and after a long pause comes back with device inaccessible. Reboot, same.

In desperation flash back to 1.05 , don't reformat. Now device is mappable and still says RAID 1 present and in correct size. No idea though if it has formatted correctly.

Is there anyway now to do an integrity check of the formatted volume ?

[jswashburn]

Now my only solution appears to be to buy another hard drive enclosure for the sole purpose of deleting a partition on the discs before putting them back into the dns-323 (if I'd had a spare drive bay I wouldn't have needed the dns-323 in the first place). There is no option in the menu to delete a partition or to recover from a failed format attempt as per the suggestion there, that really needs to be in the tools availiable to the command console.

You mentioned you have Seagate drives. In that case, download the SeaTools and run them to perform a low-level format. This will reset all drive sectors to "zeros". Whatever data, partitions, or file systems you had on it will be totally erased.

I would recommend downloading the bootble DOS iso and boot from the CD created with it. I've never tried the Windows version, but give it a shot if you have trouble with the DOS version (some motherboards are incompatible it). Also, be sure *not* to format your system drive unless you feel like reinstalling Windows and recovering lost data from previous backups. So be careful with this utility!!!

You can download them here http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools/

[Tullaian]

Yah I had/have SeaTools though it wasn't detecting the drives in the DNS-323. When I put the drives into a USB drive bay it picked them up no problems and that is what I used to reset the drives.

As per my notes, the device appears to be succsessfully configured now for RAID1 though I still don't really trust it. I have copied data to it and tested accessing it from multiple access points now though.

For whatever reason the problem appears to be caused by the 1.05 firmware as the thing that finally fixed it for me was reverting to the 1.04 version, doing the format under 1.04 then upgrading back to 1.05. Still screwy though as after the reinstall to the 1.04 firmware you can access the mgt console of the device and it appears via EasySearch but when you try to map a drive it locks you out. The upgrade back to 1.05 fixed that , but why should it have been neded ? Who knows.

Is there an EXT2 utility I can use to verify the drives in their configured state before I transfer all the actually important data to this unit ?

Best advice seems to be to avoid upgrading the firmware on a new unit until your drives are formatted, then doing the firmware upgrade afterwards. I believe where I went wrong was following the instructions to upgrade the firmware before doing the format of the drives in the first place.

[jswashburn]

Yah I had/have SeaTools though it wasn't detecting the drives in the DNS-323. When I put the drives into a USB drive bay it picked them up no problems and that is what I used to reset the drives.

Correct, none of those utilities will directly access the drives through another form of abstraction such as a NAS device. In fact, I'm suprised that it even managed to access the drive through though a USB bridge (your external drive bay). None the less, it worked and that's what counts.

Is there an EXT2 utility I can use to verify the drives in their configured state before I transfer all the actually important data to this unit?

I'm not sure if it will help, there there is a utility that will mount EXT2 drives in Windows. Check it out here at http://www.fs-driver.org/

Best advice seems to be to avoid upgrading the firmware on a new unit until your drives are formatted, then doing the firmware upgrade afterwards.

So I've heard. But like you, I'm still not confident that I can rely on it. I'll wait till v1.06 or otherwise stated by D-Link. I've already purchased two 500GB drives. I'd don't want them going to waste. Besides, I need to offload my files. Perhaps I'll just use one formatted in NTFS to store them for now.

[MikeL]

I'm having the same issue.  2 WD 750 drives and get get them formatted.  Ready to add them into computer case and do software raid there.  I'm very disappointed with the 323

[MikeL]

Got them formatted!

1) Went back to 1.04 firmware.

2) Formatted as single drives

3) Then formatted as Raid 1

4) Loading data now and staying with 1.04 until 1.06 proves stable.

Cheers

Mike

[ECF]

You can connect the drives to you PC and remove the partitions using the Windows disk utility and then place them back into the DNS-323 and format.

[medicmanonet]

hi folks,

well I've had the same 94% format stuck problem... really really anonying!

However I have now fixed it. Hope this information helps other with 94% format issue 

First off Installed 2x 250 GB Hitachi Deskstar drives one is HDT722525DLA380 and orhter was HDT725025VLA380 SO one was on the compatable drive list and one was not.

Then Tried Samsung Spin point 500GB HD501LJ drive.

In all Cases drives would stick at 94% when formated. I tired each drive induvidually, in raid 0 and 1. I tried each drive in each slot. I Zero formate devery drive (low level format took about 2 hours per drive ). All attempts were conducted on a 100Mbps wired network.

I used Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3 browsers on my freshly installed Windows Vista Ulitmate operating system.

I tried firmaware 1.05 and 1.04


STILL HAS SAME DAMN PROBLEM!

Kick the Dns 323 box around the room for a few hours and it still didn't work

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


So next morning and a few hours sleep I thought I would tried something different:
1. I got firmware 1.05 from D-Link Australia for DND-323 with Hardware B1 not A1 as listed on other D-link websites. My DNS 323 was hardware B1 version.... god knows if the firmwares 1.05 is actually any different.
2. Installed both 250GB drives in DNS 323 (BTW these drives hald already failed to format so had several partitions on them form the DNS the previous day).
3. Connected the DNS-323 and my PC together via a 100Mbps switch I had instead of the Tenda Cable router I had been using.
4. Fresh install of Windows Vista Ulitmate on PC
5. Installed only my chipset drivers and lan drivers on the pc. NO graphics card or Sound card drivers. No updates from windows update were installed either. (Actually I hadent even registered the online at this point - still on 30 days activation thingy).
6. Installed D-Link Easy Search 4.2.0.0
7. Logged in and started format USING INTERNET EXPLORER 7
8. hold brath were at 93%, 94%, and rapidly thougth 95%-100%.


PARTY!!!!!!

now I think the real reason It formated this time was I used the switch instead of my Tenda W302R wireless cable router. If anyone else is having trouble with the 94% issue I would try and connect the DNS-323 direct to your PC and nothing else on the network (I assume it will work - maybe need a patch cable or something?).

I used the switch cos I was going to install it this way eventually anyway and use a networked printer scanner thingy...


Now I've got past this annoying 94% format issue what a really  product! Torrent working, streaming music, photo and videos to the Playstation 3 - no issues yet!

Still early days and some issues are present - starting a torrent locks my pc form the drive untill I reboot it - but looking damn promising yeah!

[jswashburn]

I got firmware 1.05 from D-Link Australia for DND-323 with Hardware B1 not A1 as listed on other D-link websites. My DNS 323 was hardware B1 version.... [exploitive deleted] knows if the firmwares 1.05 is actually any different.

I've got hardware version A1 which uses the Marvell 88F5181 chip. The B1 uses the newer Marvell 88F5182 according to http://wiki.dns323.info

Despite what the Austrailan FTP site says, both dns323_firmware_105 files for A1 and B1 are the exact same file size. In fact, I downloaded them both and the one from the US site too. All three generate the exact same MD5 hash of "ee32a92228e22c6ea0a94ed88a5135a2". I suppose dlink compiled a single file that's cross compatible between the different hardware revisions. Or maybe not which is why some of us are having such problems with drive compatibility issues.

[Tonytoronto]

 Yup, the 94% bug got me too!
   Updated firmware to 1,.05 before any drives connected, tried to format using Raid1, and stopped at 94%.. Drives are 1Tb Seagate. Tried every configuration possible, diferent browsers and so on.
  After quite a few call to Tech Support and try this and that, finally got someone at level 2 that really knew this stuff.. The trick is to format the drives with "standard" option first, once i did that it stopped at 94% for quite a awhile but Easy search now showed volume1 and 2-- to use raid log into the storage device and format to Raid, the process completed and all is good. I ordered 2 of this units, the second one with 500Gb seagate drives, i repeated the process again and was flawless.. pain to have to format twice but does the job.  Overall seems like a great unit, the FTP part works well, and some features are really nice to have..

[textbookneed]

I had the 94% problem initially....

here's what worked....

-- flash backward from firmware 1.05 to 1.04

-- in the user interface go to >>> Tools >>> System >>> Idle Time:

-- change "Config Inactivity Timer" Value to 90 minutes and
    "Download Schedule Inactivity Timer" Value to 90 minutes

-- once the Drives are formatted and you select your RAID configuration, then
    you can flash back to firmware to 1.05

Post here if this works / doesn't work for you....

[jessper]

Hi  there, here's what i did when I encounter the same problem with you in formatting the drive to RAID 1 then hangs up to 94%.

First I tried to reset the DNS-323 when the drive hangs up to 94%, then format the drive to Standard Individual Disk, after formatting to the drive to Standard, I tried to reformat again the drive to Raid1 and it was successful. Hopefully this trick will help you.

[ololly1@yahoo.com]

I hit the same wall with 94%... But what I did then is I left it overnightin this state. In the morning - voila -it was formatted. I had to manually reboot it though...
I'm guessing on some drives it goes to a lower level of formatting, and it takes quite some time to format those huge volumes.

[hilaireg]

I've had similar issues on both the DNS-323 RAID1 and the DNS-343 RAID5 (haven't tried other RAID combinations).  I've managed to get a *full* RAID format with f/w 1.05 whenever I bump up against the 94% hang by performing the following steps:

1. Save the DNS-323 Configuration.
2. Reset the DNS-323 to factory default.
3. Power-off the DNS-323.
4. Remove the HDD's from the unit and use a disk utility to remove *all* partitions that appear on each HDD. 
    Windows Disk Management, Paragon, or other HDD utility should allow you to do this.

5. Insert the HDD's back in the unit - preferably not in the same bays they were in (i.e. swap them around).
6. Power-on the DNS-323.
7. Log onto the DNS-323.
8. Run the Wizard Configuration utility to prepare your HDD's.

    A) When I log into the DNS-323, I am usually presented with a
        message that the HDD's are in the incorrect order; I change
        the Address Bar URL in my web browser to:

        http://<DNS323>/web/formatHD/raid_wizard0.asp?id=9706342

       <DNS323> = The NetBIOS name of the DNS-323 or IP Address


    B) Format each HDD as separate volume to confirm the HDD's are not defective.

    C) Reformat as RAID of choice.

9. Restore the DNS-323 configuration (optional).



Notes
~~~~
- I suggest powering-off and powering-on the DNS-323 at least once between format cycles.