Comments on: Don’t buy Maxtor Shared Storage II

By: Patrick Kennedy

Patrick Kennedy — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:30:11 +0000

Thanks for the info Kyle

By: Kyle Gotliebson

Kyle Gotliebson — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:22:50 +0000

I’ve run a MSSII 500GB for a little over two years without problems on my network. I have only one complaint and that is when we have a power outage it doesn’t come back online automatically. I have to be there to push the button on the back to power it up. This is a problem as I have it set up to remotely access it from a remote computer. If I’m on the road and we have a power outage, I can’t access it until I return and power it up. There doesn’t seem to be a setup option to change this.

Also, the lights on the front are confusing. The network light can be flashing away like the unit is powered up and being accessed when the internal drive itself is still unpowered and unaccessible. You have to press the button on the back to actually power up the drive after a power cycle. I suspect this shortfall alone has fooled a number of people into returning functioning drives (with their data on it).

I have not had any PSU or drive issues to date so I guess I’m lucky.

One piece of advice I have for people is to upgrade to the latest firmware which recognizes FAT16 or FAT32 partitions on your backup drive. This will make your backup drive portable between your NAS and any XP or Linux box. Create and format the partition under XP for best results.

By: Mac

Mac — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:00:38 +0000

GOod news sort of. Was my turn it seemed. SSII 1Tb RAID. Tried new power supply – no joy. Cracked it open and disconnected on of the drives only – fired up OK with front panel flashing to indicate one drive in failure. Everything readable on remaining drive. I’m going to pull the now dormant drive out and put it into a SATA bay connected via USB t the NAS unit and use it as a peiodic static backup of the internal nas drie.

By: Drew

Drew — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:16:24 +0000

Folks, have read the posts with interest after my MSS II 1TB model became inaccessible, and showing flashing green-amber-amber-amber on front panel LED.
Two years old, so did not even try the Seagate tech support route after reading the views expressed herein. Replaced the power supply transformer (the “brick”) with a 12V, 5A model (original unit supplied is 12V, 3A) – $65 from Jaycar, hoping that was indeed the problem. No joy.

Opened the box and powered up the drives separately via desktop cable connectors, within Linux (having created SLAX bootable CD as explained above).
Can read both HDD’s ok – three apparent drives on each 500GB HDD. Lots of directories and files – but as I am not familiar with Linux, I don’t recognise anything that looks like my data. Since I can’t remember whether I set the MSS II to RAID 0 or 1, when I set it up 2 years ago, I am not sure whether the lack of recognition is because the data has been streamed (RAID 0) or because it is Linux, but I noted an earlier post that the MSS II, even when set to RAID 0 does not stream, it stores serially, so my data sounds like it may be OK, it’s just that I can’t see it in a familiar way.

What do the experts recommend?

BTW – have gone with a new NetGear model, which allows individual drive accessability rather than having to destroy the enclosure when there is a need to replace a HDD!

By: ufl_1982

ufl_1982 — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:35:06 +0000

I can not agree with more. Poor quality product and poorer quality support. Seagate is cheap and NOT worthy. Spend your $s elsewhere.

By: Steve Howard

Steve Howard — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 06:17:51 +0000

Our Maxtor SSII was replaced under warranty but the second one failed several months later. We suspected that the HD was still working so bought a cheap SATA “Docking Station”, plugged in the 320GB drive – and it worked. It’s the easy way to start and having recovered the data, a new disk in the Docking Station should keep us going with more confidence.

By: David T

David T — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:23:02 +0000

I must be lucky. I’ve had a Maxtor SSII for almost 2 years now. It’s running the central axis firmware v3.5.74. My backups to an external maxtor drive happen regularly as expected.

I’ve tested reading my backup drive from windows using the ext2fs app and that works. (haven’t tried from my macs yet).

Since it’s been 2 years I’m looking for a better alternative to backups. I’m considering getting a drobo with the network attachment. Any thoughts on that?

By: FRW

FRW — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:50:10 +0000

Thanks for the input but I’ll keep looking as apple is another company I don’t do business with. They can’t learn how to make a product with user replaceable batteries.

By: Patrick Kennedy

Patrick Kennedy — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:09:27 +0000

@frw well I went with an Apple Timecapsule (my reasons are explained here). There have been a few other suggestions in the comments here. Personally, I think that in order to get the features the Maxtor was promising you need to spend a lot more to have any confidence it's going to last.

By: frw

frw — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:45:41 +0000

So does anybody have a good recommedation on a NAS unit to replace these? I know it will cost the customer $$ but at least maybe I can give them some peace of mind.