A nice home backup solution, DLINK DNS-323
12/05/09 Filed in: Linux
I finally put out a little money to get a low-end storage solution for the house. I wanted something with fast network access and removable hard drives. The solution I finally picked was the DLINK DNS-323, with 3 1T SATA drives which, while having some problems it is very customizable.
The DLINK DNS-323:
Originally I wanted was to run RAID 1 between 2 drives and swap out the backup drive for remote storage. After seeing that the GUI interface for the RAID restore on the DNS-323 made it very easy to erase the backup drive I looked into the active hacking community for this device. Starting at the http://wiki.dns323.info/ site I found easy instructions to install the fun_plug linux hack that allows ssh, cron, rsync, smartmontools, subversion to easily make an rsync solution to the second drive.
Now I have an automated rsync done to the backup drive each night and I can easily swap out the backup drives without worry of erasing the backup data. An added plus is that the system only consumes less than 30w. Rsync is about 5.5MB/s and otherwise copying to the samba diskshare from the local network is about 16MB/s. I have not used the FTP option but that is supposed to be about 12MB/s.
So far I have been very happy with this device, even more so when I saw that DLINK has released the beta version in May of its upcoming firmware release. My MacOSX and Windows machines can easily reach the samba share and if there was any need for remote access I could ativate the FTP server.
The DLINK DNS-323:
- supports 1 or 2 SATA drives (up to 1.5TB or 2.0TB with the recent beta firmware),
- Standard, JBOD, RAID 0, RAID1
- has a gigabyte ethernet port, USB port for printers,
- software for finding it on the network and mapping the drive to your computer,
- access control rules,
- UPnP AV for Storing and Streaming Media Files,
- iTunes server for music (I never got the video to share),
- ext2 format (ext3 support in the beta firmware),
- bit torrent support
- scheduled downloads for accessing other machines.
Originally I wanted was to run RAID 1 between 2 drives and swap out the backup drive for remote storage. After seeing that the GUI interface for the RAID restore on the DNS-323 made it very easy to erase the backup drive I looked into the active hacking community for this device. Starting at the http://wiki.dns323.info/ site I found easy instructions to install the fun_plug linux hack that allows ssh, cron, rsync, smartmontools, subversion to easily make an rsync solution to the second drive.
Now I have an automated rsync done to the backup drive each night and I can easily swap out the backup drives without worry of erasing the backup data. An added plus is that the system only consumes less than 30w. Rsync is about 5.5MB/s and otherwise copying to the samba diskshare from the local network is about 16MB/s. I have not used the FTP option but that is supposed to be about 12MB/s.
So far I have been very happy with this device, even more so when I saw that DLINK has released the beta version in May of its upcoming firmware release. My MacOSX and Windows machines can easily reach the samba share and if there was any need for remote access I could ativate the FTP server.
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