CrunchGear

Can you plug in an external DVD drive to the USB ports to burn back-ups of the data?

Does it have world voltage. 100-240V and 50-60Hz

Where is this available from?

“who need a terabyte of data?”

ME

i already have over 2 terabytes of data….i buy a lot of 300gb drives..:P

this would make life easier…

Well due to personal (yarr, I be a pirate!) and proffesional I have about 10 TB of storage here and trust me the damn space seems to fill itself, I’m currently thinking of adding another 15 TB because the 10 TB is actually already full and I had to delete all the movies and games on them and they are filled again :+

how loud is this gadget?

Is the drive samba? Or is the software required to access the drive?

Is there RAID functionality?

2 questions-

What happens if you have it plugged into the network _and_ into a local computer?

How noisy is it?

thanks

The power supply is the same whether you use it here or overseas, the cord that goes from the power supply to the wall is the only thing that changes. You don’t need anything to access the drive, as long as you know it’s IP or DNS name you can go through start -> run and access the drive w/o any software. There is Raid functionality. At 1Tb it’s running a Raid 0 or Stripe, you can also change to a 500Gb Raid 1 or Mirror if you like. The drive itself is actually very quiet, so unless you are standing right next to the drive in the middle of the night you aren’t going to hear very much at all. Even though you can connect to a local system it’s not really meant or designed as such, it’s a network device. If you are wanting something to connect to a local system I would recommend an external drive.

Anyone considering this should take a look at the Infrant ReadyNAS NV. It’s easily expandable, has a lot more features and its sexy. Mmmmm. Sexy NAS.

http://infrant.com/products/products_details.php?name=ReadyNAS%20NV

I use mine as a print server, backup device (for my laptops) and streaming music server for Sonos.

pete

You said, “we had little trouble running my iTunes catalog from the remote drive”. Let me get this right… are you saying you’re running iTunes apps on a PC while the songs are physically stored on this monstrous 1TB NAS… and you had no problem? Hey, that’s cool! I suppose my wife’s PC’s iTunes apps can also play the same song on this same NAS?

That’s the way i’d like to do with my MSS+ 500GB but it is not full working.
It works fine through DAAP protocole with my xbox powered by XBMC but as I wanbt to connect to the NAS from my PC (XP SP2) it is not possible.
The only way is to map a share as local drive let’s say net use Z: \\NAS\My Music
but it will index hours instead of using DAAP protocol which is made for this way to use.
I contacted Maxtor which is by now Seagate lol
They don’t give a fuck as these NAS were made for business use and not mediaserver.. which is written on the box by the way.
So i’m quite disappointed about this product.
Better buy a synology or a qnap NAS

Does anyone know what the difference between the two model of this drive is. The one displayed above is model # N01R010. However, the Maxtor website says there’s also a N02R010. Anyone know the difference? Is what a new model of the other?

I’m waiting for the results of the second diagnostics and if everyhing goes as I predict the NAS is dead. For the second time. Here’s a bunch of main features of the Maxtor Shared Storage II:

1. Difficulties getting your data back.
2. You have to keep it in a fridge to keep it cool.
3. No possibility to reach the drive in any way - you loose warranty.
4. Forget about the RAID - useless crap. You won’t get any data back anyway.
5. SAMBA makes it completly useless in a “small company” or any other place, where there’s more than one user. (No user rights, no admin access to the files etc.)
6. Costs a lot.

If you need a 1TB storage just buy a p3 and add 2 500gb disks. You can run diagnostics on them (the diagnostics tool on NAS shows either OK or replace the drive), install any OS you like and recover any data. Forget about this NAS, it’s useless.

I just bought one…yesterday I set it up- today it cant find the drive.
I HATE IT already which is such a shame.

Alexander’s comments mirror my own experience with this device. I have a dead MSS II 1 TB. Less that 9 months old. It was configured as a mirror which is absolutely worthless considering there is no software included to restore from the mirrored drive. The diagnostics are useless and no other data recovery software that I’ve found can communicate with it. Sure, I’ll get a replacement but this was my back up and was configured as RAID I to reduce the risk of data loss. I’ll wind up spending hundreds to get the data back as MAXTOR does not warranty the data against loss.

Alex is right, hang on to an old PC add a couple of HDDs and you’re far better off!

My MSS II 1TB just died as well, and these users are correct: There’s no way (that I’ve found) to recover your data. So what’s the point of having mirrored drives?!

Looked great at the start, then suddenly died ( 2 of them after 3 - 6 months).
Maxtor Support is useless. 600 euros down the gutter.

you live, you learn ..

I also purchased the MSS II and mine is having to be returned. All my data is lost. It makes a clicking sound and is no longer recogised on my network. I hate Maxtor right now!

BTW, yes Maxtor support is appalling. I kept getting through to a very softly spoken man who was utterly useless. Their data recovery quote was almost 1500ukp!

I got my Maxtor Shared Storage this week… and it already died. It was shutting down and never finished… it just sat there… so, decided to unplug it to turn it off… well, it turns out, according to Maxtor support, that if you unplug it, then u kill your Maxtor storage…. say what? That’s what they said… what a piece of crap!

Same for me.

Got my Maxtor for 6 months. Now it does not boot aymore so I cannot found it on the network.

I may try to opent it and connect the drive (tying to found the data back) but then I wil loos e the warranty.
Not happy indeed !!

Any advice welcome

I’ve hade my maxtor Fusion running for 8 months. Occassionally it would simply disappear. I worked with the folks at Fabrik who helped a good deal troubleshooting my network remotely, discovering that an Apple Airport was configured as a rival router, confusing things. Changing the Airport settings made things more stable, but far from perfect. My Fusion (500Gb) gets backed up onto another drive every 2 weeks. Good thing because it no longer mounts onto my network at all. Can’t find it on the Web, and my install program can’t locate it on my LAN. Seagate support is horrible so far. Reading the above comments is very discouraging.

Granted the drive is under warranty but only for replacement. Seagate says to backup all drive data before sending it in, but how?

If anyone has any more info on getting data off of a Fusion that can’t be accessed through the LAN, I’d like to know about it ASAP.

Its really too bad, because up until now I LOVED the darn thing.

After I got my Maxtor Shared Storage I used Mirroring (2×500GB).
First of all an raid error occured after 1 week. Changeing from raid1 to raid0 and back fixed the problem, but the data was lost.
2 weeks later the whole thing did not want to boot any more. No help.
Got a new one from Seagate.
Conclusion: waste of money, the data is in high danger.
Besides: the data transfer is super slow…….useless

I’ve just purchased the Maxtor Shared Storage II 500GB Drive today. I’ve put all my pics and docs on to it (27GB worth). Turned the drive off to unplug to get the serial number to register it. Now it won’t boot up. Turns on, can hear the drive spinning round, all that happens is the rear power button LED is constantly green light and the front power LED is blinking and the network LED is also blinking normally, like it’s booting up, except it goes on and on and on……

Has anybody else had this problem and is the drive dead and all my data lost? I’ve only had it 12 hours in operation!

I’m having the exact same problem myself since yesterday, after a mains power failure in my appartment. No way to boot it up… Any other ideas?

Same thing happened to me twice now. Set up the drive, put a few files on it to try it out, went back to it a few days later and the front power light is flashing (indicates powering up or shutting down) and stays like that. Can’t see the folders I set up on it, can’t connect to the web UI on it either. I’m not going for a replacemnet this time, just going to get my cash back. Shame, but it looks like this device just is not reliable enough to trust with data.

I just got a small one a week before. MSS II 320G. It runs samba. I found it takes while (hold the power button for about 5 to 10 seconds) to shutdown the unit.
I just wonder if it can handle lost power without properly shutdown.
So, I cross the fingers: Don’t lost power on this unit! or I may need a UPS backup for it.

Hope the company put build in software on the chips in the unit, then when the hard drive totally die, I can still replace a new hard drive.

Maxtor is complete shit. They sucked so bad, they got bought out by Seagate. I just had my Shared Storage 300GB piece of shit destroy my data too - avoid anything with the Maxtor name on it!!

One more note to those who’ve had data loss. Carefully peel the “do not remove” warranty sticker off the case. Open it up. Put the drive in a different case - preferably firewire and run a data recovery app on it. After you’ve recovered your data put Maxtor’s stupid sticker back and get your item warranty exchanged.

What data recovery did you use?

I got Maxtor Shared Storage II a couple of months ago and so far (thank God) it’s still working. My problem tho’s got something to do with security and I hope I can get help here.

Connected that NAS to our LAN. I cannot change the security settings so that my NT domain user can also access the folders and files there. It seems to maintain its own username list. So you’re forced to map it from your desktop (using diff login name) to access it. Otherwise if you do a direct network access, you can only view it but not change anything.

Does anyone know any solution here? Thanks

I hate to say it, but these drives are complete crap. I’m on my 3rd drive. My first one just turned off after 3 days of use and would not turn back on, #2 and #3 both worked fine until I move their physical location. The second I moved the units to my server room after configuring them, neither unit would re-connect and pull and IP. After 3+ hours on the phone with tech support they stated both units had an unrecoverable failure. The raid is a joke, if it fails you have to send the unit back to Maxtor for them to replace the drive. The whole point of raid is quick data recovery, not much use if you have to wait 2 weeks for Maxtor to send the unit back to you.

same sorry tale: i bought 2 which seemed ok, 1 at home mirrored and 1 at work striped, so i bought 2 more 1 of which was DOA: orange flashy lights which seagate don’t officially diagnose but which apparently means a power fault. great.
the 2nd one went invisible on me (LAN lights don’t light up) after 2 weeks of light use, luckily the day after i backed it up.
i’ve managed to get a refund on these as they were <1 month old.

now my 1st one has developed an exciting network symptom - you can see it on the network, but when you try to write to it it disappears, from each machine you try to write from in turn.
then I can’t power it down. if i pull and replace the DC plug it comes back, but for how long i wonder til i lose all that data too.

shame, i’ve been using maxtor external HDDs for years with quite some mistreatment - lots of moving around and jolting - and always found them reliable, but no more. close on £1k down the tubes i now need to start again with a decent netgear NAS running proper RAID5.
support? indeed, forget it.

Good lord. I just bought the little brother to this thing (just the ~300GB version, hence I’m only out $150) and I’m glad I read this before trusting it for anything.

Still, I might mirror my iTunes library to it for family music sharing. Only I can’t find any basic documentation on how it interacts with iTunes. iTunes sees an empty shared library on the network named “maxtor” but I don’t see how to populate it with music. Maybe it’s a matter of copying stuff into an account and folder on the drive, but if so, which one and what path do I use? The drive doesn’t come with a printed manual and the online documentation site (http://support.maxtor.com/sharedstorage) times out!

What do I do to put a library of MP3s on the Maxtor so iTunes can see them?

Well, hello from Sweden. I can tell you that they sell this sh-t here as well. Was looking for a good NAS to put my music and other things we want to share on the network at home. Decided to go for this one as it seemed to be one of the few that definately worked well with Mac OS X.

After two weeks it has gone through all the systems I have read about here and on amazon.com (customer comments for this product): drive detaches itself from the network constantly, will not go into hibernation when not used (=very warm), drive cannot be reset when it “hangs” (=hard reboot, not good)… and last night I got the 1+4 blink meaning /share file system error and then, later the 1+1 Raid error.

With so many reports, this cannot be a small problem. Why do they keep selling this product at all? They should have urged resellers to remove it from the shelves a long time ago!

I feel like an idiot. I have one of these. It says it has backed up the data, but then when I open it in finder and look to see the backed up files they are not there unless I physically drag them into the folders on the shared storage drive. What am I missing here?

One from Finland here. Just got the piece of shit yesterday and it’s already dead. First it took 3-4h to get it work at all, and 2 hours after it died.

It didn’t communicate with my router at all, and when I used a crossover cat5-cable to connect it directly to my laptop it couldn’t co-exist with an internet connection. My internet connection goes through WLAN and when WLAN is switched on the MSSII software is unable to connect to the piece of shit connected to my ethernet adapter.

Has anyone succeeded in returning this drive for a cash back in the UK? Can you please share the tips how this can be done.

Maxtor One Tough II 1 TB Yes, a BIG waste of time and money, mine failed after one week, power light flashes fast always. Manual has no information about this, reset does not work.

Mine has been running perfectly without a single glitch for over a year now. Thinking about getting another.

No problems here.

I’ve had mine 6 months.. I upgraded the firmware right off the bat when I got it.

It’s suffered multiple power outages and it’s still works like a charm. However having read the issues with reliability I copy the whole drive weekly to an extra drive I have.. just in case.

One tip that might be useful to all is that if you suffer a power failure and can not connect to the drive, press the power button once. Don’t hold it just click the button. Mine makes this whirling grinding noise for about 30 seconds and then it goes quiet, after which I can fully access it again.

Crossing my fingers this thing last a while. But who knows.. hard drives fail at any time. I’ve had several Hitachi Travelstar drives fail on my days after getting them. I’ve had some of the same kind never even show signs of failure. It’s luck of the draw with hard drives me thinks.

A week after purchasing this device I noticed that the power light was continuously flashing I called Maxtor (Seagate) for some assistance and they noted that the device had failed even though I was still able to access my data and so it was recommended I send it in for replacement, I back up my data (for 3 days) and send it in Seagate sends me a “New” (refurb) Device and I restore the data (another 3 days), about 2 weeks later I notice the device had a blinking amber light so I try to reboot…it won’t power down and is extremely HOT, the fan had seized so I open it up and make a quick fix to recover my data so that I can return/exchange the device again…there’s another 6 days of data transfer, so I get my “new” device and rite out of the box it errors, by now it’s starting to get old so I call Maxtor and yet again create another RMA after my 4th NAS I finally get one that works…so I thought…the OS looks to have failed all though I don’t have any blinking amber lights my NAS is undiscoverable on the network, so I connect via crossover cable and am able to access the device so I log into the web GUI on the drive and try to change configurations, with every attempt the device errors so I said screw it I bought a Linksys NAS HD Caddy threw 2 500GB drives into it and have had it up and running since JAN with no issues as of yet the other great thing is if the device fails its build on NT Technology so data will be easily recovered.

For what it’s worth I’ve gone through 3 drives in just under 18 months. If you read the seagate “support” forums, reviews on amazon, and elsewhere you’ll find these things are very prone to failure. I purchased 2 drives (about 3 months a part) last year (2007). I bought the second one thinking the problems I was starting to hear about were folks who had abused their drives or otherwise had just gotten a bad “batch”. Within a week of the second’s drive purchase, the first failed. It was a tedious and error filed RMA process that took several weeks (they originally refused the first shipment/brokerage - no reason given, I got hit with large duty and shipping charges, all data was lost, etc.), but I did finally get a new unit. The replacement unit failed about 3 months later. I never bothered to get it replaced as I frankly didn’t want yet another drive that I couldn’t rely on.

My second drive lasted until today - about 11 months. I now have $1000 worth of door stops.

These drives where used in two different controlled server room environments (18c/50% humidity/ AVR/Conditioned line UPS) and where used as 2nd line backup devices (backups of backups).
Stick with Western Digital - and avoid these. They’re simply garbage and can’t be relied upon.