Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This is my third D-Link NAS. I bought a DNS-323 one year ago and it has been on ever since, serving up files reliably to my PC/Mac home network, downloading torrents, and streaming videos to my PS3/XBOX 360 (after installing Twonky Media Server). Based on my mostly positive experience with D-link products and price-to-features ratio, I decided to stick with the brand. I had wasted money on a Galaxy Metal Gear NAS, and read mostly lukewarm reviews for Netgear, Iomega, Linksys, and other makers. Other NAS devices like the DLNA-enabled Buffalo Technology LinkStation Live were attractive, but their price point or storage capacity was not. I need a large number of bays to create a centralized media server.
When I outgrew the DNS-323, I bought a DNS321 2-bay when I really should have applied that $130 toward this 4-bay product instead. I wanted to consolidate the half dozen 1 TB external drives I had sitting around and network them so I didn't have to keep plugging and unplugging USB cables when I wanted to retrieve files. My home network is heterogeneous and I also needed the ability to write large files (4 GB+) to the drives. FAT32 is the only mutually writable format across XP and Mac, but it has a 4 GB filesize limit, making it impractical for my movie storage needs. The D-Link uses a Linux file system (ext2 or ext3, your choice), so filesize concerns are now gone.
I've had this product for a week, and so far so good. The device can be configured from any web browser, so you don't need the CD (which is a Windows-only configuration app). I have 1 TB Hitachi and WD drives inside. Build quality is solid (made of thick aluminum). It's a brick of a device and looks quite durable.
For the price, I am not expecting world class security and many bells and whistles. I just need it for storing my personal files and media on my home network, and stream them, and for that, it works to my satisfaction. The iTunes server works very nicely. For file transfers, I FTP to it and do all my copying that way. For some reason, the Mac is a lot faster (20MB/sec) than copying from XP (10MB/sec). Vista is the worse, and I usually get 5MB/sec.
It would've been really great for D-link to include BitTorrent support for this, like the DNS-323. Maybe in a future firmware update.
All in all, I'm quite happy with this product. I don't place heavy expectations on it and don't demand $1,500 server performance from a $370 device. It was the cheapest 4-bay NAS I could find for the features I wanted and gives great overall performance for the price. You can install telnet on it (look for Fonz's funplug) and open the device up to more hacking if you are so inclined.
Will update this review as I use the device more.
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The D-Link ShareCenter 4-Bay Network Storage Enclosure (DNS-343) connects to your network instead of to a computer so everyone on your network can back up content to one central location. Plus, it lets you share your stored content across your network and over the Internet so family members, friends and employees can access it no matter where they are.
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