Where the drives previously installed and formatted on your PC? If so I would recommend inserting them back into you PC and removing all partitions before formatting in the DNS-323. 
thx. for response:
Latest test:
1. Drive info:
root@lpl-pc-gb:/mnt# hdparm -i /dev/sdd
/dev/sdd:
 Model=WDC WD15EADS-00P8B0                     , FwRev=01.00A01, SerialNo=     WD-WMAVU0180057
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=50
 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=32767kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=?0?
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=18446744072344861488
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
 AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: Unspecified:  ATA/ATAPI-1,2,3,4,5,6,7
 * signifies the current active mode
2. cleaning partition table
root@lpl-pc-gb:/mnt# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd bs=512 count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
524288 bytes (524 kB) copied, 0.499433 s, 1.0 MB/s
3. Test (DNS-323, FW 1.08b05)
 Vendor       Model       Serial Number       Size
 WDC     WD15EADS-00P8B0     WD-WMAVU0180057     500 GB
any suggestions ?
Regards