Comments on: Don’t buy Maxtor Shared Storage II

By: Pat

Pat — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:44:59 +0000

Raul, I’ve decided to go with an Apple Time Capsule, which so far looks good. Getting data from the Maxtor backup is proving time-consuming and a little frustrating, but I wouldn’t have expected anything else.

By: Raul Lucky

Raul Lucky — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:23:48 +0000

Pat,

Just found your blog via Google. I am using one of the infamous MSSII 1TB drives too and am getting the out of sync RAID every once in a while and have to turn off and on the device to get it back working. Also, I just purchased a D-Link DNS-323 from Amazon and will be working on getting that up and running too. I am wondering if reflashing the firmware with the open-source one will give better stability to the system or is the controller just plain crap? I chose the DNS-323 because of its known reliability, the user-replaceable drive and the fact that it gets great support (at least new firmware releases to address issues). However I do use the Maxtor USB/FW drives and am trying to move more towards user-replaceable systems (that do not void warranty). So what are you using now?

cheers,

Raul

By: Bye bye Maxtor at Pat’s Point of View

Bye bye Maxtor at Pat’s Point of View — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 08:46:21 +0000

[...] enough is enough. I have finally ditched my Maxtor Shared Storage II NAS drive which I had so much trouble with. I was sick of it screwing up, but mostly I was sick of not being confident that my data was [...]

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:50:48 +0000

Thanks Pat, we’re about to buy that Maxtor shared Storage II so since you mentioned that I lost my interest of buying that storage. I’m thinking now about D-Link DNS-323.

By: Pat

Pat — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:52:00 +0000

I think it says a lot about what Seagate think about the Maxtor products they “inherited”.

By: Craig Mortimer

Craig Mortimer — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:47:01 +0000

I have had the exact same problrm with a Maxtor 320 now they want me to send it back with business accounts information on it. I thought it was strange the way they said it must be faulty so quick over the phone.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 29 May 2008 02:38:37 +0000

Thanks for your help. The problem is pretty simple. The disks would not spin although mains power was supplied at the cord. I have advised Seagate, as Digiworld still haven’t returned promised calls. The unit was registered and there is no issue of warranty; just indifference by the retailer.

By: Pat

Pat — Wed, 28 May 2008 03:08:35 +0000

Hope things improve for you Peter. What was the specific problem you had with the drive?

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 28 May 2008 01:21:16 +0000

I couldn’t agree more. More specifically, the problem is worse when dealing with Digiworld. My Maxtor 500GB lasted weeks and was returned for repair/replacement. The diagnosis was to take one week. 8 weeks and counting, 5 phone calls and requests for return calls unanswered, I am told by the Sales Mgr that repairs are the responsibility of the technician, as is customer service and satisfaction!

By: Pat

Pat — Sun, 25 May 2008 23:36:10 +0000

An update on the situation. The NAS device has been working well since the last incident, running pretty much constantly. I put this success down to the cooler ambient temperature now that we're heading towards winter.

Then all of a sudden it started flashing an error code on the front LEDs. Anyone who has one of the 1TB units will probably be familiar with this code: green orange orange orange orange. This apparently means "filesystem error". Oh joy.

By this time the device was inaccessible again, neither by HTTP or SMB/CIFS. And I couldn't turn it off using the power button. Nothing much had been written to the drive since the last backup, so I felt I had nothing to lose. I couldn't hear the disks spinning so I pulled the power plug. This is a wonderfully satisfying action, especially when accompanied by the (internally spoken) words "die you bastard, die!".

Plugging the power back in and booting it revealed a working device but the error code was now green orange, indicating a RAID sync problem. Reading the support forums this appears to be quite common, but someone has found a solution. I followed the instructions and was able to rebuild the RAID 1 array by re-adding the disk that had got out of sync. It was surprisingly easy and other than the array rebuilding, took a matter of minutes.

So I now have a solution to the two most common issues:

if the drive goes nuts, disconnect the network, wait for no disk activity, and then unplug the power
if one of the disks gets out of sync, login and rebuild the RAID array

What else can go wrong?