Comments on: Maxtor Shared Storage II Hands On

By: Salman Ahmed

Salman Ahmed — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:17:32 +0000

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.

By: Charles

Charles — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:19:35 +0000

Anyone know how to get the drives out of this thing without a baseball bat?

By: LJR

LJR — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:36:04 +0000

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.

By: LJR

LJR — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:15:02 +0000

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.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:13:59 +0000

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.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:15:59 +0000

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.

By: Vassilis

Vassilis — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:12:12 +0000

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?

By: Anthony

Anthony — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:20:02 +0000

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.

By: R-Bro

R-Bro — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:36:49 +0000

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?!

By: David T

David T — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:00:07 +0000

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.

By: J. Parker

J. Parker — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:06:40 +0000

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

No problems here.

By: not-registered-on-this-site

not-registered-on-this-site — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:14:40 +0000

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

By: User NZ

User NZ — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:13:03 +0000

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.

By: Astrp

Astrp — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:00:13 +0000

What data recovery did you use?

By: redwine

redwine — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 20:32:28 +0000

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.

By: Janne

Janne — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 07:38:18 +0000

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.

By: Sandy

Sandy — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 22:20:16 +0000

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?

By: Sara

Sara — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:24:55 +0000

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!

By: Prentiss Riddle

Prentiss Riddle — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 22:42:11 +0000

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?

By: mark

mark — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:55:45 +0000

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.