If you had told me a year ago that I’d have a terabyte of data hanging on my home network, I’d have probably laughed. First off, who needs 1 TB?! That’s just silly. And secondly, there’s nothing out there that can make that block of storage usable. After all, share drives are wonky and web-based applications are junk right? Well, I just got a 1 TB block of usable storage and I’m suprisingly thrilled.
First things first: the Maxtor software works on both PCs and Macs, which knocked out 95% of my bitching right off. Installation couldn’t be simpler: Plug in the power cable, plug in the Ethernet cable and sit it in a dark corner somewhere. But if it must remain visible, the box itself is fairly attractive with plastic cladding and a brushed metal face with inset RAZR-eqsue buttons. There is a main power switch on the back and the drive is UPnP compatible, so it essentially shows up whenever it’s plugged in.
The install program is seamless on OS X and Windows XP, although it did require a restart on both. It has two USB ports on the back for sharing printers and external storage and is fairly simple to install and run. The install system adds Maxtor EasyManage to your desktop and then allows you to create virtual drives that are formated for either Windows or OS X and create backup plans.
Because the system is so streamlined, it’s actually quite hard to assess how good a job this thing is doing. In initial tests, we had little trouble running my iTunes catalog from the remote drive, even over an 802.11g network connection through my wood floors. This device is definitely a valuable part of a home or small office network and at $899.95. At less than $1 per gig, this is a great option for any anguish free backup plan.
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.
the worst Maxtor shared storage II I have had three of these go out on me… Not reliable… In about 3 months these things just start clicking and making noise. powere light starts blinking and my computer or the supplied software cannot locat the connected storage devise..
I would not buy this . JUNK
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 mounted the drive in linux (some boot cd, think it was ubuntu) as a windows partition and was able to copy the data to another drive.
Anyone know how to get the drives out of this thing without a baseball bat?
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.
This hard drive is such a piece of shit. I have several drives, but I needed something with good amount of space for storing high definition movies and having them readily accessible. After transferring nearly 900GB worth of movies it crapped out on me. It’s the same issues that’s been listed here. Blinking power led, won’t reset, can’t ping or be recognized by router, won’t turn off…AAAUUUGGHH! Word to the wise, DO NOT BUY THIS HARD DRIVE IF YOU VALUE YOUR DATA! I’ll never buy another Maxtor anything again.
if one of the drives fails, the device becomes unaccessibkle from the network, as if it is stuck in some loop. if you open up the box and disconnect the failed drive, then start and connect to network, the device is accessible over the network again and you can get your data from the remaining working drive, if not mount it in linux as a windows partition, then I could copy my data to another mounted drive, I used a ubuntu boot cd.
I’ve had a 320GB MSII for six months now. Replaced the firmware with a version that has Telnet. It has worked reliably for me.
At first it was getting hot so I opened up the case and lubricated the fan with some teletype grease. That cured the overheating. The fan is pretty much junk with a sleeve bearing. I left the plastic shroud off so I can get to the fan, the card and the drive if need be. The case shrouding is not designed to be easily removed. I broke a couple of tabs in the removal process. No big deal.
The drive is formatted as ext3 so if there is a problem with the board one can connect the drive to any linux box via a usb adapter or straight to the sata connection and retrieve data.
The drives are standard issue seagates and it’s hard to believe they are selecting bad drives just to install in this unit. These drives would fail in a desktop computer or in a usb external case.
The board is a Marvell reference design and very nicely built ARM design. The processor is fast and there is adequate RAM. The OS resides mostly on the hard drive itself so making changes is quite easy if you have telnet access.
I particularly like the fact that the drive is ext3 formatted because that provides protection from power failure during writes and also allows storing files greater than 2 gb. I use the unit to store mp4 files in iso format so large file compatibility is important to me. Most NAS units force the use of FAT32 as the file format. That sucks. Furthermore, Samba is significantly slower when it has to work with FAT32 vs: native format.
I have never had the drive disconnect or disappear from the network. I have pulled the plug on it when it was running several times and it just comes back to life. In short, it works great.
I have two 320’s now and both work well. Sorry everyone else here seems to be having trouble. Thought I should let the world know that my units are fine. It’s also worth considering as a unit to hack. The innards are pretty much the same as the Buffalo Pro and there is also a developers community for it at the NSLU wiki.
P.S. The new Maxtor Central Axis software provides facilities for recovering from a failed drive when the unit is in mirrored mode. The instructions they provide are for their new drive configuration. However, considering that the software can be installed on a MSII as well, it is reasonable to believe that the recovery process will work there too. The only catch is that the case is a bit hard to dismantle. However, once the shroud is off, getting the drives out is a snap. The trick is to get the side panels off. They snap in with little plastic tabs and I had fiddle around for several minutes to get them freed up. There isn’t any place to insert a screwdriver blade - darn it.
However, this new capability means you don’t have to ship the unit back to Seagate when it fails. You can recover the data yourself.
Go to the Seagate site and download the Central Axis beta software if you’re interested. It’s free.
I want to make it clear that I HAVE NOT done this myself. I’ve the read the documentation and it says the software works fine on the MSII units. So be careful and back up your data before you attempt to install the new firmware. You can also download a binary of the current MSII firmware in case you need to get back to where you were.
I had it replaced twice in eight months and the recent replacement has also died. By now I know that the RAID is for name only so I did not lose any data. Just stay away from this product.
Have had a MSS II 1 TB for just over 12 months, it connected to my laptop, running XP2, in FAT files,without any problems, but would not connect to my desktop, also running XP2, but in NTS. Contacted Maxtor/Seagate by E-Mail, next to useless, after 3 E-mails, they told me to follow instructions supplied with the unit, tried everthing I could find to fix this problem, no luck. I then tried to backup my files, finished up utterly confused. Last week I tried to back up my files on my laptop and noticed that the unit was making a clicking sound, tried everything I could find to connect to the unit, can’t switch the unit off via switch on back, l can’t connect, even though it shows up on ‘My Computer’. Anyone who is thinking of buying one of these units should be very careful, in my opinion I wasted $A640.00 on a piece of JUNK. I will never buy anything made by Maxtor/Seagate again, if they are trying to stay in business, this is not the way to go
Hi there. I bought this maxtor f**l of sh**t piece of junk to get affordable (but not cheap!) raid solution without the noise of a real server. I set it in RAID 1 mode. Decent performances, despite a very slow web admin. Not fast. Neither very silent, but I thought “well this is raid linux, should be safe”…
And then it failed. fast green blinking (upper light). No hard drive sound at all, no help on seagate/maxtor website about that issue.
I managed to recover my data, and I’ll explain it to you in a few lines. In the meantime, my advice is “DO NOT BUY THIS. DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM MAXTOR. DO NOT LET THEM BELIEVE THEY CAN SCR** YOU LIKE THAT”. And since I’m quoting, I’m not sorry for the caps, cause they are for Maxtor.
And then I saw it: 1) Do NOT open or your loose your warranty. 2) Backup your date BEFORE you send it to our technical support because we WILL send you back empty drives.
Well, even if they would say “We will try as HARD as possible to get your data back” I would never send a potentially almost broken hard drive by mail would I? That would definitely kill it then, no? Besides that, how the hell could I trust them? My data is PRECIOUS. It is my WORK.
So what about doing a backup of my biggest storage drive? Should I buy another f**cking maxtor external drive?
My point of view is if shouldn’t be allowed to sell data storage stuff without allowing to access the data inside. It is not like if I were trying to open the hard drive itself, uh?
So, how did I do to recover my data?
First of all I needed some storage big enough to handle it. I recently bought a MyBook, almost empty so far, that would be enough.
Thanks to your help, I figured out how to open this thing. Why in hell are they assembling these things in such a way any attempt to dismantle it is a chinese braingame? So, after a few zen minutes, I managed to do it without breaking it. And I had to break no less than 3 (warranty void?) stickers to get through.
Since I’m not a linux guy, I tryed to find a way to get data back from XP. I connected one of the drives to usb trough an external sata enclosure. Using diskinternals linux reader I saw the biggest partition as “linux raid”. But could’nt retrieve any data. But I could’ve done some image backup if I wanted to.
I also tried the ext2/3 driver for XP but no luck.
Acronis bootable disk manager did saw the linux raid partition too, but could’nt do anything with it.
I would probably have tried installing linux (or booting it if I had one) but I thought of something else.
What if the problem is some weakness of the main power supply not getting trough the circuits to the drives anymore?
I then tested booting with only one drive connected. Still nothing.
Last, I brought another computer next to the now “not so shiny” peace of junk and managed to connect the power supply from the PC to the harddrive, and the sata to the maxtor coyote circuit (yeah it says ‘maxtor coyote’ on them) using one spare cable (the included connectors are not suited for that).
I booted the PC so power went on my hard drive. After a few time I powered up the maxtor shared storage. Guess what: fast blinking green light. Ho my. Am I cursed?
And I waited a few more minutes before cutting of the power. And it finally worked. The unit shortly switched to orange light and booted up. I could get normal access to it so I immediatly started to back up everything.
Since I replaced the default copy engine of windows XP with TeraCopy I had no problems to duplicate millions of files trough the network. Happy I am.
So, this is my final advice: try to supply the harddrive with alternate powersource. It might just be that. And don’t buy such peaces of marketing junk anymore :-)
Hope this will help some of you getting your precious data back.
Take care!
Guess what. It appear both drives are ok. But one of them just wasn’t updated (RAID1) for… months!!! Without warning.
I have had a MSSII 500GB unit for a 2 years now. Its been fine and not missed a beat. It sits in the loft out of sight and mind and backs up various systems and stores photos and music. I would like to get a second 500Gb unit and replicate them over my network to safeguard the data especially the photos. Anyone know someone who wants to sell a unit?
Complete Crap. Here is my recent transcript with their support.
Jeffery H.: Hi, my name is Jeffery H.. How may I help you?
[ME]: I have the 1TB version of the SharedStorageII NAS unit. For the past couple of months it has been randomly falling off of the network, unable to be found by the installed software utility and unaccessible via the network share
[ME]: if i reset it using a paper clip in the reset hole, it would work for a few hours and die again.
[ME]: last night i reset it again
[ME]: it appeared to be working last night. this evening it is making a high pitched squealing noise and periodically making what sounds like a chirping sound
[ME]: the top light on the front panel is amber
[ME]: last night it was flashing b/w green and amber
[ME]: the bottom light is randomly flashing green
Jeffery H.: if its squealing and chirriping then you’ve got a failed drive.
[ME]: i have only used it for a total of about 6 hours, but am unsure how long ago i purchased it
[ME]: can you look up when it was purchased by the s/n?
[ME]: what is the warranty on this unit?
Jeffery H.: it has a 1 year warranty and seems to have expired
[ME]: i believe i have it configured in raid 10 (usable capacity is 500TB)
[ME]: is it possible to get it repaired?
Jeffery H.: We do not have a paid repair service and the drives are not field repairable.
[ME]: so it’s a $500 paper weight?
Jeffery H.: Unfortunately at this point.
Jeffery H. has disconnected.
Hi Everyone,
Before I read your articless I was so naive and I thought that I have just some small issue with my Fuc…g MAXTOR. Now it seams that problem I have is very similar to yours TOP LED DIODEs just blinking and blinking and blinking and blinking … and I feel more and more sure that my data will be LOST. Is there anyone in this space who can safa my data ( I only wants picture of my family all the rest I can forget ) THNX - I will definetly make good promotion how to NOT BUY MAXTOR product anymore.
Again, another victim. After 6 month, I also experiencing problems with my SSD II. Top LED is constantly blinking and drive doesn’t seem to boot. Tried resetting, holding button on the back, changed the power cord from the adaptor, but nothing seems to help. What I read here brings me to the solution that I have to open up this thing and get a linux machine to free my data. I am very disappointed in this machine. Is there anybody who knows a solution to resolve the blinking / non rebooting issue? Otherwise there is nothing else left then taking this thing apart and try to get my data to another disk.
I found a possible solution on http://www.openmss.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1078&p=5572#p5174
Has anyone tried it? For this solution you need to open the unit and you’ll loos your warranty probably…. This is what it said:
“Try to change the two HDD-Connectors in the MSSII against each other, try to start…..WAIT 1hour…disconnect power, try again, WAIT again
dont care about the different lights …use “first-connect” procedure.
If you are lucky the unit starts and you will find it again..fine
if not..change the SATA-Connectors again to them original position again try to start…WAIT..dont care the lights..WAIT
and latestly now the Unit should be able to start again by forced using another of it´s four boot-partitions after the heavy boot-mistakes you produce by this crazy “change” procedure
( in your case: there are 2 copies of the boot-partition on each drive!!) mostly this recovers bad problems on a corrupted boot-partition”
same thing as everyone else. I’ve gone through 3 of these drives within a year. The drives themselves are usually ok. It’s just the OS and anything else they’ve wrapped around the drives. So, if you want to save your data, you can usually just crack the drive and hook them up directly. It voids the warranty, but at this point the feedback in the market is overwhelmingly negative. I’m not sure why anyone would continue to put data on these unless it’s running as a backup (or second line backup).
I think a lot people that use this product should save themself some time and go for a external hard drive instead. This is NAS box, using configuration other than Raid 1 doesn’t make any sense. People have no idea what raid is and use the configuration out of the box, when one of the drive breaks and compain for not getting data back. Of course you not be able to get data back, it is raid 0! Most people running daily backup from this nas box to an external harddrive. Unless they version their backup, what is the point of doing this other than spinning drive on the nightly basis and gain nothing. Set up Raid one, when one drive breaks, put in a new drive and rebuild raid 1.