Unfortunately no one can be told what fun_plug is - you have to see it for yourself.
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I am seriously considering purchasing one of the DNS-323 units. I am an experienced computer user, but I do not know too much about RAID. I have two different hard drives of different capacities. I have a Western Digital Caviar 400 GB and 500 GB Seagate barracuda drive. Obviously, both drives are sata. Is there any possible way that I could use raid mirroring for only a portion of the disks? for example, if I only wanted to use 160 GB on both of the drives as an exact copy of each other without using any outside software and having the rest of the space available on both drives as an unmirrored set up? obviously this question has to be answered by somebody who has a knowledge of partitioning. Also, what filesystem must I use with the DNS 323. Both of my drives are an NTFS, and I read that they have to being EXT 3. Does this mean I have to reformat my drives?
It would be greatly appreciated if anybody can answer this question before I go and buy the box.
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First - let my point out that my answers assume a standard DNS-323 with out the use of fun_plug or any trick partitioning or formatting.
I will answer your second and third questions first - the DNS-323 uses an ext2 file system (ext3 is no longer offered) and the drives will need to be reformatted, but you do not need to do this as a separate process before installing the drives, you do it through the DNS-323 web admin page.
Any data on the drives WILL be lost when they are formatted so you need to back up anything you wisk to keep.
To go back to the first question - yes - the DNS-323 will allow you to choose the size of your RAID array, so you can select whatever portion of the available space as a RAID array, the remaining space will be formatted as a "linear JBOD" volume, meaning that the remainder of the space on the two drives will be used to form a single storage volume.
Using the example you chose - you would have Volume_1 - a RAID volume of 160GB and Volume_2 - a JBOD volume of 580GB (400-160+500-160).
A word of caution - should a disk fail - all data stored on Volume_2 will be lost.
Now - you did not ask about different RAID types, but you professed a lack of knowledge about RAID so I would like to cover a few things that I feel may be important.
The DNS-323 offers two types of RAID - RAID0 & RAID1.
RAID0 writes data to each disk alternately - first chunk to the first disk, second chunk to the second disk, third chunk to the first disk, and so on - this was originally done to provide increased performance, at the expense of reliability - if either disk fails all the data in the array is lost. RAID0 on the DNS-323 provides no perfomance improvement and personally I see no reason to use it.
RAID1 also writes data to each disk alternately but the same data is written to both disks - first chunk to the first disk, first chunk to the second disk, second chunk to the first disk, second chunk to the second disk, and so on - the idea being that if a disk fails the data remains intact.
Please do not consider RAID1 to be a form of backup - it is not - it is not meant to be. Any changes made to the data, are made to both disks simultaneously - if you delete a file (deliberately or accidentally) it's gone from both disks, if a virus or software glitch corrupts data, it's corrupt on both disks.
RAID1 is about disk redundancy - with a single disk, if that disk failed whilst you were reading a file, you'd have to stop working until you could have the disk replaced and the data restored (assuming you have a backup), with redundant disks, if a disk failed whilst you were reading a file, the only way you would know it had happened is when the RAID system sends you an alarm or alert (the DNS-323 does this through email).
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Your signature perfectly sums up the answer to my question. Thank you so much. What would be the best way to back up my computer C partition of 45 GB and also have some kind of backup of my data on the DNS 323. I like the RAID idea but if I mirror only 160GB and if a drive goes, I lose all of volume 2 even if its on multiple drives, it doesn't appeal to me. Is it better to approach this in a different way? For example, If I decide that I only must secure 40 GB of data, does this change the scenario? Could I have a 40GB volume that is using RAID1 across two drives and then have the rest of the 400 and 500 drives as seperate partitions so I don't use everything besides 40GB if ONE volume goes down?
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The way the DNS-323 is designed - if you use RAID, any space not used by the RAID array is automatically configured as JBOD, there is no other option - however - if you are willing to get a little more involved in how the unit works, it MAY be possible to change this through fun_plug and custom partitioning, there is a gentleman here - bq041 - who may be able to assist you in that regard.
Personally - I would not use RAID1 for a device storing backups - if the device is not doing duty as primary storage I don't see the point in it.
The main advantage of RAID1 is that there is no downtime and lost productivity incurred should a disk fail - how does this help you if what you have stored on the RAID1 array is a backup of your main workstation and that does not have a RAID1 array?
What happens if the disk in the main workstation fails? What ever task you were doing comes to a stop until you replace the disk and reinstall the OS - your backup on your RAID1 array is not accessible and you're unproductive, even though you have RAID1.
I use a desktop that has no RAID but all of my application data is stored on a server with a RAID1 array - if my desktop fails I can simply grab my laptop which has the same applications loaded, and continue to work using the data stored on the server.
The RAID1 array on the server is backed up to the DNS-323. If a drive in the server fails I can continue working with no interruption, and since the server does permit the drives to be hot swapped, I simply remove the failed drive and replace it and it automatically rebuilds the array.
If the server itself were to fail, my work would be interrupted - for as long as it took me to remap the applications to point to the DNS-323.
For most of us the best way to use the DNS-323 is simply as two separate volumes, if necessary backing up the first volume to the second.
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fordem makes a very good point here. If you are only looking at the DNS for backups of another system, then I would also recommend 2 individual drives. Even with my experimenting with the RAID configuration and partitioning scheme on the DNS (fordem--thanks for the props), I have individual disks running on both my DNS's. I actually do use them live, but I backup using the USB port on the unit to an external drive. I currently have 6 1TB drives that I am using for rotating backups. I use fonz' fun_plug for access and use the USB because the DNS was not designed to use it for extra drives. This is good, because the DNS' setup ignors everything that is not an internal drive, so there is no complecated config files to alter (as there are when making custom setups on the 2 internal drives).
Anyway, for your scenario, I would reccommend using 2 separate drives and backing them up, either to one another, or to an external drive, depending on your storage capacity needs and hardware.
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