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#26 2007-08-23 21:36:47

dickeywang
Member
Registered: 2007-06-29
Posts: 59

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

zeroday wrote:

I have done a lot of tests with this kind of problem as I had same situation .. My question for those with this issue is: where the NEWly installed HDD already been used in a system like FAT32 / NTFS environment? In my test we could 'reproduce' it when NTFS/FAT32 formatted HDD's where being used.

In my case the Seagate was formatted as NTFS/FAT32 and served as the main OS HDD of my desktop before I inserted it into the DNS.

Last edited by dickeywang (2007-08-23 21:37:54)

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#27 2007-08-24 03:12:01

Focher
Member
Registered: 2007-05-23
Posts: 35

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

zeroday wrote:

I have done a lot of tests with this kind of problem as I had same situation .. My question for those with this issue is: where the NEWly installed HDD already been used in a system like FAT32 / NTFS environment? In my test we could 'reproduce' it when NTFS/FAT32 formatted HDD's where being used.

I strongly doubt there is any relation to whether the drive had a different format before. The DNS actually repartitions the drives and reformats them just as you would in a full PC Linux installation.

If you take the drive out of the DNS and hook it up to a Linux-based PC, you can see that it creates a swap partition in addition to whatever other partition is relevant to the configuration you choose. Even a RAID1 configuration will have matching swap partitions on each drive.

The general problem seems to be that if the DNS loses the drive configuration, it is not particularly good about recovering gracefully so it just falls back to the "these are new drives" attitude.

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#28 2007-08-24 07:56:56

zeroday
Member
Registered: 2007-07-01
Posts: 136
Website

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

Focher ..
it's wierd that ONLY when the HDD's are in an early stage been used with ie. NTFS the situation can be reproduced. Even when using FAT32 than format will / can fail during the process.

Now after all HDD's are formatted EXT2 I am unable to reproduce the issue in any way, but when I have a repartitioned (NTFS) one: back to same story. I know developers have done a lot of testing / checking upon that and firmware with such fixes (including 94% fix) has been released as beta by Conceptronic under 1.02 and probably DLINK will follow soon with their own tree and features / functions after they have tested it.

So I challenge people to test ;-)

the more feedback the more earlier we know exactly what is happening.

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#29 2007-08-24 07:58:33

zeroday
Member
Registered: 2007-07-01
Posts: 136
Website

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

dickeywang wrote:

zeroday wrote:

I have done a lot of tests with this kind of problem as I had same situation .. My question for those with this issue is: where the NEWly installed HDD already been used in a system like FAT32 / NTFS environment? In my test we could 'reproduce' it when NTFS/FAT32 formatted HDD's where being used.

In my case the Seagate was formatted as NTFS/FAT32 and served as the main OS HDD of my desktop before I inserted it into the DNS.

mjeah .. I think that has caused the issue. If the HDD was plain non partitioned formatted it would have gone ok .. Seen this behaviour twice or trice with my own setup .. (also using pre-partitioned / fat32/ntfs) hdd's ..

after they were ext2 no problems anymore ..

zeroday

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#30 2007-08-24 11:29:03

Focher
Member
Registered: 2007-05-23
Posts: 35

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

zeroday wrote:

Focher ..
it's wierd that ONLY when the HDD's are in an early stage been used with ie. NTFS the situation can be reproduced. Even when using FAT32 than format will / can fail during the process.

Now after all HDD's are formatted EXT2 I am unable to reproduce the issue in any way, but when I have a repartitioned (NTFS) one: back to same story. I know developers have done a lot of testing / checking upon that and firmware with such fixes (including 94% fix) has been released as beta by Conceptronic under 1.02 and probably DLINK will follow soon with their own tree and features / functions after they have tested it.

So I challenge people to test ;-)

the more feedback the more earlier we know exactly what is happening.

Sorry. I misunderstood the scenario you were addressing. I didn't understand that the NTFS partition(s) were still on the drive. I have no idea whether the DNS handles drives with existing partitions very well. Never tried it.

Did you test with having the NTFS partitions then deleting them before putting the drive in the DNS? In that case, I don't see how the DNS would see it anything than a fresh drive.

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#31 2007-08-24 12:58:01

zeroday
Member
Registered: 2007-07-01
Posts: 136
Website

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

We did many tests .. but still not 100% sure what is the exact environment..
even we had issues with 1.01 and reformatting drives (failure, reformat ok, failure, reformat 94% error) etc..

but now focus on 1.02 to see if that's better

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#32 2007-08-27 06:56:43

dickeywang
Member
Registered: 2007-06-29
Posts: 59

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

I don't know if it is related, but on my Linux/Windows dual-boot laptop with 2 HDD installed, sometime the HDD, which is usually assigned as /dev/sda in Linux, suddenly becomes /dev/sdb and verses vice. It usually happens when I exit windows and then boot into Linux with only "hot restart" instead of completely powerdown-and-powerup. 
Could it be the same reason that causes the DNS to format the wrong HDD?

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#33 2007-09-07 04:52:52

rtoledo2002
Member
Registered: 2007-09-07
Posts: 5

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

dickeywang wrote:

I read that Dlink FAQ before I installed the Seagate, and in fact that's the exact reason that I didn't remove the Hitachi when installing the Seagate because I though it would simply just be a mount point difference. I should not have trusted D-Link's FAQ.

I tried to mount the Hitachi to a linux machine and confirmed that it is the HDD that was formated. I also tried remove the Seagate, and only left the Hitachi in the DNS, and the web interface said that the disk is empty.

I curse whoever designed the DNS or its firmware. There are lots of Lecture videos/notes that I made when attending classes, lots of home videos that I made during traveling, and they are all gone.

I am glad that I still have a copy of my entire Ph.D. works on the desktop, which are all the works I have been done in the past 6 years. I will defend my thesis in two month. I would probably kill myself if those had been lost.

Again, D-Link is terrible!!!

PS: the Hitachi has always been in the right slot (the one on your left hand side when you facing the front plate of the DNS), and the seagate was only installed in the left slot.

I don't mean to be harsh on you, but I must ask.

did you ever see the movie  "with honors"  it has Joe Pesci and Branden Frasier ?  were he loose his thesis down a window and Joe Pesci holds him ransom for the whole movie?

please tell me that besides a "desktop"  you backed it up to a cd or dvd?   that's my question.

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#34 2007-09-07 05:34:13

fordem
Member
Registered: 2007-01-26
Posts: 1938

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

dickeywang wrote:

I read that Dlink FAQ before I installed the Seagate, and in fact that's the exact reason that I didn't remove the Hitachi when installing the Seagate because I though it would simply just be a mount point difference. I should not have trusted D-Link's FAQ.

I tried to mount the Hitachi to a linux machine and confirmed that it is the HDD that was formated. I also tried remove the Seagate, and only left the Hitachi in the DNS, and the web interface said that the disk is empty.

I curse whoever designed the DNS or its firmware. There are lots of Lecture videos/notes that I made when attending classes, lots of home videos that I made during traveling, and they are all gone.

I am glad that I still have a copy of my entire Ph.D. works on the desktop, which are all the works I have been done in the past 6 years. I will defend my thesis in two month. I would probably kill myself if those had been lost.

Again, D-Link is terrible!!!

PS: the Hitachi has always been in the right slot (the one on your left hand side when you facing the front plate of the DNS), and the seagate was only installed in the left slot.

I just noticed this - why would the slot "on your left hand side when you facing the front plate of the DNS" be the right slot?

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#35 2007-09-07 08:41:04

dickeywang
Member
Registered: 2007-06-29
Posts: 59

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

fordem wrote:

dickeywang wrote:

I read that Dlink FAQ before I installed the Seagate, and in fact that's the exact reason that I didn't remove the Hitachi when installing the Seagate because I though it would simply just be a mount point difference. I should not have trusted D-Link's FAQ.

I tried to mount the Hitachi to a linux machine and confirmed that it is the HDD that was formated. I also tried remove the Seagate, and only left the Hitachi in the DNS, and the web interface said that the disk is empty.

I curse whoever designed the DNS or its firmware. There are lots of Lecture videos/notes that I made when attending classes, lots of home videos that I made during traveling, and they are all gone.

I am glad that I still have a copy of my entire Ph.D. works on the desktop, which are all the works I have been done in the past 6 years. I will defend my thesis in two month. I would probably kill myself if those had been lost.

Again, D-Link is terrible!!!

PS: the Hitachi has always been in the right slot (the one on your left hand side when you facing the front plate of the DNS), and the seagate was only installed in the left slot.

I just noticed this - why would the slot "on your left hand side when you facing the front plate of the DNS" be the right slot?

Oops, it's a typo. shout be "on your left hand side when ...". smile

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#36 2007-09-10 13:56:03

Kerzhan
New member
Registered: 2007-09-10
Posts: 3

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

OK, I just read through the thread and I have 3 questions:

1)  If the second drive to be added is unformatted and placed in the left slot there shouldn't be a problem, correct?
2)  Has anyone just taken the formatted first drive from the right slot, installed and formatted the new second drive in the left slot, then reinserted the first drive back in the right slot after reboot?  What happens then?

I'm looking at doing this in the Standard configuration with both drives formatted in ext2 format.  I don't see why the scenario in my second question wouldn't work, but I figured I'd ask first.

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#37 2007-09-10 15:07:57

dickeywang
Member
Registered: 2007-06-29
Posts: 59

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

Kerzhan wrote:

OK, I just read through the thread and I have 3 questions:

1)  If the second drive to be added is unformatted and placed in the left slot there shouldn't be a problem, correct?
2)  Has anyone just taken the formatted first drive from the right slot, installed and formatted the new second drive in the left slot, then reinserted the first drive back in the right slot after reboot?  What happens then?

I'm looking at doing this in the Standard configuration with both drives formatted in ext2 format.  I don't see why the scenario in my second question wouldn't work, but I figured I'd ask first.

I think I tried once with your method 2(not sure if exactly the same as your described), it works (means it formated the correct HDD) with a few little problems.
1) There was a "lost+found/" directory created in one of the HDD, i.e. /mnt/HD_x2/lost+found/, normally this directory should be in the root directory.
2) One of my HDD was partitioned in a weird way, namely the 500GB space was spitted into 3 partitions (0.5GB swap+ about 460GB ext2 + 0.5GB ext2) instead of 2(0.5GB swap + 461GB ext2), and the small 0.5GB ext2 was not mounted and it can only be seen if you telnet to the DNS and type in "df".
I think there is something funny going on with the firmware, therefore the only way I think is absolutely safe is a fresh reformat of both HDDs (backup your data somewhere else of course).

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#38 2007-09-10 15:15:51

fonz
Member / Developer
From: Berlin
Registered: 2007-02-06
Posts: 1716
Website

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

dickeywang wrote:

1) There was a "lost+found/" directory created in one of the HDD, i.e. /mnt/HD_x2/lost+found/, normally this directory should be in the root directory.

Normally, there's one lost+found per disk - and in the root of that disk. /mnt/HD_x2/lost+found is correct, afaik.

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#39 2007-09-11 08:00:22

Kerzhan
New member
Registered: 2007-09-10
Posts: 3

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

Well, I went ahead and rolled the dice... went with my method 2 and everything worked out just fine.  The blank drive was formatted NTFS and was reformatted as Volume1 for Standard ext2 with no issues that I saw.  After rebooting I shut down and reinserted the original Volume1 disk.  Weirdly enough, it became Volume2 but no data was lost.  I had to remap a couple of network drives, but I was fine after that.  I'll have to look at the partition structure to see if I lost 0.5 GB as mentioned above, but I am using firmware 1.03 and 2 WD 200 GB drives.  When I buy bigger drives later I'll try setting up RAID from scratch.

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#40 2007-09-11 20:07:41

fordem
Member
Registered: 2007-01-26
Posts: 1938

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

Kerzhan wrote:

Well, I went ahead and rolled the dice... went with my method 2 and everything worked out just fine.  The blank drive was formatted NTFS and was reformatted as Volume1 for Standard ext2 with no issues that I saw.  After rebooting I shut down and reinserted the original Volume1 disk.  Weirdly enough, it became Volume2 but no data was lost.  I had to remap a couple of network drives, but I was fine after that.  I'll have to look at the partition structure to see if I lost 0.5 GB as mentioned above, but I am using firmware 1.03 and 2 WD 200 GB drives.  When I buy bigger drives later I'll try setting up RAID from scratch.

Which slot did you put the original drive - the one that became Volume2 in?  If I recall correctly, with a single drive either slot will be Volume1, but with two drives the right side slot - your right side when facing the unit - will be Volume1

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#41 2007-09-11 23:17:41

dickeywang
Member
Registered: 2007-06-29
Posts: 59

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

fordem wrote:

Kerzhan wrote:

Well, I went ahead and rolled the dice... went with my method 2 and everything worked out just fine.  The blank drive was formatted NTFS and was reformatted as Volume1 for Standard ext2 with no issues that I saw.  After rebooting I shut down and reinserted the original Volume1 disk.  Weirdly enough, it became Volume2 but no data was lost.  I had to remap a couple of network drives, but I was fine after that.  I'll have to look at the partition structure to see if I lost 0.5 GB as mentioned above, but I am using firmware 1.03 and 2 WD 200 GB drives.  When I buy bigger drives later I'll try setting up RAID from scratch.

Which slot did you put the original drive - the one that became Volume2 in?  If I recall correctly, with a single drive either slot will be Volume1, but with two drives the right side slot - your right side when facing the unit - will be Volume1

There is something strange going on with the Volume number. I have seen the right slot be assigned as Volume 1 and Volume 2, in both situation when BOTH slots were occupied. In short, when you installed two HDDs from a fresh reformat of both HDDs you will see the right slot to be assigned as Volume 1; but if you install one HDD first, then install a second HDD sometime later, depending on whether you remove the first HDD while the second was being formatted or some other unknown reasons, the right HDD could be either Volume 1 or Volume 2 when you finally have the two HDDs running in the DNS. I can't find out what exactly causes the the volume number changes, but it is definitely more complicated than "the right bay is Volume 1 when both slots are occupied" as described in the D-Link FAQ.

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#42 2007-09-12 04:31:11

Kerzhan
New member
Registered: 2007-09-10
Posts: 3

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

The drive that was originally Volume 1 in the right slot changed to Volume 2 when I replaced it after formatting the new drive which became Volume 1 in the left slot.  I've come to notice that even though I didn't lose any data I seem to have lost the functionality of the iTunes server after I had to redefine the streaming folder.  iTunes annoys me anyway.  The media server is fine though... Windows Media Center (I have MCE 2005) had no problems finding the media server after I changed the folder location.  I learned from all of this that it's best to have both drives on hand from the beginning.

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#43 2008-02-28 06:25:04

armen52
Member
Registered: 2008-02-28
Posts: 9
Website

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

So after reading this whole thread, I still can't tell if there is a definitive way to set up one drive so that in the future when I decide to add a second, I can avoid:

1) Reformatting the original accidentally
2) Having the Volume number and/or mount point of the original drive change

Is there a way I can do this? If so, I would just like to set up the first drive that way so I don't have to worry about this in the future. Thanks.

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#44 2008-02-28 13:51:56

fordem
Member
Registered: 2007-01-26
Posts: 1938

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

Put the first drive in the right side bay - your right when facing the unit and you should be good to go.

As a precaution, backup your data (or remove the first drive) when adding the second, especially if the second drive has been used before.

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#45 2008-07-15 07:58:39

bscott
Member
Registered: 2007-07-13
Posts: 48

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

fordem wrote:

Put the first drive in the right side bay - your right when facing the unit and you should be good to go.

As a precaution, backup your data (or remove the first drive) when adding the second, especially if the second drive has been used before.

This is more than a precaution, it seems to be the ONLY way to go...

The first half of my story is here and since then, I'm still struggling to get back to a usable situation... skipping over a lot of the intervening weeks, I recently I put a brand-new fresh out of the wrap drive into the DNS-323 (left side) with my full (HD_a Volume_1) on the right, and like several other reports here, it blanked both drives.  Seems there's NO reliable way to add a second disk, whether or not you're trying to form a RAID mirror!

I think this is an issue which should be addressed by DLink.  There's no possible reason for it to format both drives while claiming to only format the newly-added one, nor to sync a blank drive to a full one.  Backing up is always good advice, but how do you back up several hundred gigs of data without investing more money than the DNS-323 (and probably your PC too...) cost in the first place?  What's the failure rate for 50 burned DVDs?

I think most people are going to have their largest drives in their NAS.  I now have FOUR of the same make/model drive after all my various attempts to get this going (and I gave up on trying to restore RAID a month ago) and I'm tired of trying all sorts of combinations only to have to laboriously copy hundreds of gigs back from various portable USB devices.

I'm not saying D-Link is terrible, but this isn't something that happens only when you're dicking around with Fun_plug or other hacks - this is a pretty obvious, repeatable, and IMHO preventable, bug.

Last edited by bscott (2008-07-15 08:00:35)

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#46 2008-07-15 09:37:09

dickeywang
Member
Registered: 2007-06-29
Posts: 59

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

bscott wrote:

fordem wrote:

Put the first drive in the right side bay - your right when facing the unit and you should be good to go.

As a precaution, backup your data (or remove the first drive) when adding the second, especially if the second drive has been used before.

This is more than a precaution, it seems to be the ONLY way to go...

The first half of my story is here and since then, I'm still struggling to get back to a usable situation... skipping over a lot of the intervening weeks, I recently I put a brand-new fresh out of the wrap drive into the DNS-323 (left side) with my full (HD_a Volume_1) on the right, and like several other reports here, it blanked both drives.  Seems there's NO reliable way to add a second disk, whether or not you're trying to form a RAID mirror!

I think this is an issue which should be addressed by DLink.  There's no possible reason for it to format both drives while claiming to only format the newly-added one, nor to sync a blank drive to a full one.  Backing up is always good advice, but how do you back up several hundred gigs of data without investing more money than the DNS-323 (and probably your PC too...) cost in the first place?  What's the failure rate for 50 burned DVDs?

I think most people are going to have their largest drives in their NAS.  I now have FOUR of the same make/model drive after all my various attempts to get this going (and I gave up on trying to restore RAID a month ago) and I'm tired of trying all sorts of combinations only to have to laboriously copy hundreds of gigs back from various portable USB devices.

I'm not saying D-Link is terrible, but this isn't something that happens only when you're dicking around with Fun_plug or other hacks - this is a pretty obvious, repeatable, and IMHO preventable, bug.

I'm sorry to learn that you had the same experience. Like you said, I put the largest HDD in the DNS and the problem for that is when the disks are full and you need to upgrade to a larger HDD, it is hard to back up all the data without buying any extra HDD or HDD enclosure. In my case, my laptop only has a 100GB HDD (sold all my desktops to save on electricity bill ), while the HDDs in the DNS are 400GB and 500GB each. Now I am having about 480GB data on these two disks, and if the DNS had no such a problem, I could easily copy all the data onto the 500GB disk, and replace the 400GB one with a larger HDD. However, because of the possibility that the DNS may format the old HDD, things becomes much more complicated and at the end, I had to buy an USB enclosure and transferring data between my laptop's HDD, the DNS and the USB enclosure.

Last edited by dickeywang (2008-07-15 09:38:13)

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#47 2008-07-15 15:15:59

fordem
Member
Registered: 2007-01-26
Posts: 1938

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

I am not going to disagree with the statement that there is a problem that D-Link needs to fix - but - the responsibility for lost data is that of the owner of the data - if you value it, you have to back it up, it really is that simple.

Let's take bscott not having a backup when adding a second disk to a DNS-323 and having the DNS-323 format the wrong disk - agreed it should not have happened, but, he could just as easily have had a disk failure on the single disk and lost the data.  Not having it backed up, for whatever reason, was a choice he made.

BTW - D-Link - the way I would handle the formatting of the drives is to create a format menu that forces the user to select the drive to be formatted, you don't necessarily have to give them control over the partitioning, just the drive selection.

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#48 2008-07-15 16:17:01

bscott
Member
Registered: 2007-07-13
Posts: 48

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

fordem wrote:

I am not going to disagree with the statement that there is a problem that D-Link needs to fix - but - the responsibility for lost data is that of the owner of the data - if you value it, you have to back it up, it really is that simple.

Yes backups are indispensable.  But a backup should BE a backup!  If there's no way to do a supported task without loss of data, then your backup becomes your 'primary' for the duration of the process, and you would then - by this logic - need ANOTHER additional and distinct copy for total safety!

This software flaw is a problem whether you have a backup or not, and IMHO worthy of discussing on its own terms - without the backup issue, which I'm sure we can all agree that we all agree on.  A RAID-capable device intended to reduce downtime is actually causing it... with all due respect, "It's that simple" sometimes isn't quite that simple.

There's a larger issue - a backup doesn't restore lost time and effort.  I didn't lose any data per se (or not much), what I've lost is many, many hours getting that data organized and assembled from its various locations - several times, in fact.  I was trying to upgrade to a device large enough so that, for the first time, I'd be able to keep everything in one place.  And it should have been possible, even easy.  It's not difficult to imagine other situations in which merely having another copy of the bits doesn't fix everything.

I know how cheap drives are these days.  I saw a refurb terabyte drive go for under $90 last week.  But even if it's a buck a petabyte, we shouldn't have to jump through this many hoops - not because of a device that's in a price range comparable to the drives you can put into it.  Not for something as preventable as this is.

Last edited by bscott (2008-07-15 16:27:23)

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#49 2008-07-15 16:39:28

bq041
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2008-03-19
Posts: 709

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

bscott wrote:

The first half of my story is here and since then, I'm still struggling to get back to a usable situation... skipping over a lot of the intervening weeks, I recently I put a brand-new fresh out of the wrap drive into the DNS-323 (left side) with my full (HD_a Volume_1) on the right, and like several other reports here, it blanked both drives.  Seems there's NO reliable way to add a second disk, whether or not you're trying to form a RAID mirror!

There is a very reliable way to do it.  Pull out your drive with the data on it, and start the unit only with the new one.  When you format is, you cannot possibly format the drive with data on it.


DNS-323     F/W: 1.04b84  H/W: A1  ffp: 0.5  Drives: 2X 400 GB Seagate SATA-300
DNS-323     F/W: 1.05b28  H/W: B1  ffp: 0.5  Drives: 2X 1 TB  WD SATA-300
DSM-G600   F/W: 1.02       H/W: B                Drive:  500 GB WD ATA

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#50 2008-07-15 16:47:49

knireis
Member
Registered: 2007-12-10
Posts: 231

Re: OMFG, Lost all my data! D-link is terrible!

bq041 wrote:

bscott wrote:

There is a very reliable way to do it.  Pull out your drive with the data on it, and start the unit only with the new one.  When you format is, you cannot possibly format the drive with data on it.

I just upgraded one of my discs from a 500gb to a 1TB disc the same way. No problems at all.

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