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D-Link's latest desktop NAS appliance aims to offer home users a simple solution for sharing files over the network and Internet. The DNS-313 certainly won't take up much desktop real estate as this single drive appliance is remarkably compact and yet offers both USB 2.0 and Gigabit Ethernet connection options. You won't be able to use them at the same time as the interfaces at the rear have a small sliding cover over them that only allows one of them to be accessible.

The DNS-313 adheres to the same design philosophy as the dual drive DNS-323 as its chassis is a sleek matt-black aluminium affair that feels well built. It's supplied diskless so you can pick your own SATA drive and D-Link is promoting it as capable of supporting the latest high capacity 1TB models. Drive installation is a simple process as you slip the front cover off, slide the drive in where it mates with the combined power and SATA interface at the back and pop the cover back on.

Installation is handled by the bundled Click'n Connect utility, which locates the appliance on the network, formats the drive for you, restarts the appliance and then maps the default volume to a local drive letter. Well that's the theory, but we came up against a few compatibility issues. Our first choice was a 250GB Western Digital WD2500KS drive, which the unit refused to acknowledge - we could hear it power up but the drive LED on the front panel wouldn't light up and power button just flashed continuously. We then tried an older 200GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9, which the utility identified and formatted but the unit hung after restarting. We met with more success with a Western Digital 74GB WD740GD and a 150GB WD1500ADFD both of which worked without any problems. Seeing as D-Link is promoting the DNS-313 as a 1TB appliance we couldn't pass up the opportunity and installed the latest 1TB Hitachi UltraStar SATA drive which, to our relief, was accepted without any complaints.

The appliance's browser interface offers you two choices, the second of which is D-Link's Schedule Downloads feature. This is similar to the tool provided with Synology's Cube Station CS-407e's Download Service, which enables files and folders on FTP or HTTP servers to be downloaded to the appliance - note that BitTorrent isn't supported. Provide login details, the URL of the source, a location on the appliance to copy the files to and a recurring schedule and the appliance manages the process in the background. We found this easy enough to use and were able to schedule downloads from our FTP and HTTP servers without any problems.

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