Legacy Network Products

[AxisOfEvil]

I've had a Central Axis file server for 6 Months. Recently it stopped working. It is worth the cost of a replacement for me to get the data off the drive if it happens to be readably on my pc directly.

The symptoms are:

1. power on.

2. Power light=on Activity light=off Drive Status Light=blinking steadily

3. After 5 seconds: Drive spins up, followd by Activity light flashing randomly.

4. After 10 seconds: Activity light stops, Drive status light(s): solid red, plus steady blinking white.

I took the drive apart. It was fairly difficult, but didn't take too long.

I installed the drive in my computer directly (running Vista). I ran two different Linux EXT2/3 drive mounting programs, and mounted the drive read-only.

I was able to see folders, and copy data from the drive... for a bit.

After about 700 meg, the drive stops working. This is very repeatable. I shut down my computer, start it up. Can copy files, and after a short bit (not heat realated) It fails.

This symptom seems similar to what I've been hearing with the genaral 1TB drive firmware problem. I understand that the problem has to do with the corruption of some data in an area of the drive where the drive stores status information. It loops through this finite space, and once it gets to the end, begins again at the beginning. Since the failure I'm seeing seems to be realated to how much I use the drive, and not how long it's been powered on, nor how warm it is, I'm thinking it is similar the the issues people have had with standalone units.

So the point of my post.

a. has anyone experience similar problems.

b. has someone discovered a workaround.

c. is it likely that if I send it in for a replacement, i'll get a unit with a similar problem.

d. are my observations completely wrong, and why.  

The model of drive installed is a Barracuda 7200.11, ST31000340AS, P/N98X158-568

The firmware is D81

Seatools Results:

--------------- SeaTools for Windows v1.1.1.0 ---------------

1/22/2009 5:49:52 PM

Model: ST31000340AS

Serial Number: 9QxxxxEY

Firmware Revision: SD81

Identify - Started 1/22/2009 5:49:52 PM

Identify - Pass 1/22/2009 5:49:56 PM

SMART: Supported and enabled

48-bit Address feature set supported: True

Max LBA: 1953525168

Host Protected Area features: Supported and enabled

Mandatory Power Management: Supported and enabled

Security Mode: Supported not enabled

SET MAX security extension: Supported not enabled

Advanced Power Managment: Not Supported

Download Firmware: False

SMART self-test supported: True

SMART error logging supported: True

Drive Temperature(C/F): 39/102

Power-On Hours: 3766

SMART - Pass 1/22/2009 5:51:58 PM

Short DST - Started 1/22/2009 5:52:33 PM

Short DST - FAIL 1/22/2009 5:53:06 PM

SMART - Pass 1/22/2009 5:53:35 PM

Identify - Started 1/22/2009 5:53:50 PM

Identify - Pass 1/22/2009 5:53:53 PM 

[SwissKnife]

I've had the exact same behavior with two out of three Central Axes that I've bought--at least as far as the red solid plus white blinking status light.  I found some documentation about the status lights, but it doesn't cover this case. 

I haven't gone to the trouble of removing the drive yet.  I'm wondering if I might be able to install the drive from one of the "dead" enclosures in the enclosure that seems to be still working to access the data.  

Anyone ever tried?  Any help would be much appreciated as the data on the drives is valuable to me.

[dgturnquist]

I have had 3 Shared Storage 2TB drives fail, all within one week of having them.  Then, they sent me a Cental Axis Business to replace the last Shared Storage.  Within 2 days, same problem as you are having.  I am 0 for 4 with them.  I paid $800 for the Shared Storage last summer - I"m writing it all off as I've spent more hours trying to make it work than its worth.  Zero for 4?  Come on.

BTW-in all my cases, the issue has been the 'one white blink plus 4 red light blinks', meaning the controller is not working and is not repairable by me (per support).

[stephenaron1]

I just ordered a Maxtor Central Axis™ Business Edition to replace my 2nd dead Maxtor Shared Storage II. Is my new device the same device you are having porblems with? You have the Business Edition?

[dgturnquist]

Yes, that is the same unit - mine is a 2TB unit.  Seagate Tech Support just had me send the unit back to them for a specific review of the product by someone on their end and is having a new unit shipped to them for verfication that it works prior to sending back out to me.

The support team was very nice on the telephone, but they still claim that they are not aware of this problem and seem genuinely surprised at it - even though there are quite a few forum listings of similar problems.  We'll see how the next one works.  Unfortunately, even if it does work, I've lost trust in using it as my #1 backup, so I will purchase another drive for primary backup duty.

[stephenaron1]

I have been so disappointed in the Maxtor Shared Storage II drives that i had. I hope this one doesnt have the failures that the previous models i had have. At least on my current MSS, only one drive died to far, so i can pull the data off the mirror. Too bad they didnt make the drives user replaceable...........

[Larks]

I had these exact problems, and called support.  My immediate problem was that I had saved everything to my Maxtor Cantral Axis drive prior to a reformat and XP reinstall of my main drive, and the Central Axis drive failed with the flashing red LED during the re-load.  I called technical support on June 6, 2009 and was told (1) my drive would not be repaired, but I could get a warranty replacment and that (2) in response to my question about security, that once it was repaired the drive would be wiped to government standards (3) the flashing red LED was not a known failure message.  Having read Axis' post here, as well as the post by everest at http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=mss&thread.id=1423, I decided to attempt the disassembly myself.  It took approximately 15 minutes.  This disassembly must be done with care (be well grounded and don't force anything), but is not too difficult.  After installing the drive in my computer, I was able to access it with Linux Reader, but that application seemed unable to buirrow into directories more than 4 levels deep.  I then found explore2fs which got the entire drive without problems.  I made two images of the disk without problem.  Again, the symptom I experienced was the flashing red exclamation LED (no white).

More troubling, by far, was what I saw during the disassembly procedure.  It is obvious why these drives fail, and the fingerprints of the design process are all over this unit.  The device's design did not consider thermal issues until late in the design process.  The thermal management arrangement is pathetic (I will not describe it - despite its shortcomings, it is clearly MAXTOR proprietary)  This might have been adequate if the device had had its advertised sleep mode, but with the drive's running constantly, the thermal management system rapidly came to thermal equilibrium with the drive and was of no further benefit.  Based upon my expetience (18 years) in reliability and design, every consumer of this product can expect to have to exercise the warranty provisions.  From my (admittedly) inaccurate assessment of the system temperature, just by holding it when there is no (intentional) disk activity at all, I estimate the temperature inside the case to be approximately 65C.  Several of the components (whose max temperature I checked) on the interface board are rated at only 55C.  The constant failure rate portion of the lifetime curve increases exponentially with temperature.  This is why these devices are failing.  The airflow through the bottom is constricted.  There is less than half a millimeter of clearance between the bottom of the unit and its vents.  This unit had much of its thermal management inserted very late in the process, probably to meet a shipment schedule.  This product really had no chance at all.

The internal drive has been working flawlessly since freed from its literal infernal housing.  You will violate the warranty when you crack it open to salvage the drive (and your data), but the option is to return it for a brand new drive.  Do you really want to replace a failed drive with one which has the exact same problems?  That you must decide for yourself.

In a nutshell, it apprears that although many people have complained about this failure symptom (continuous flashing exclamation point LED), that support has never heard of it.  I am being charitible in suspecting that this is because it is the interface board which has failed, and that support's 8 x 11" checklist simply doesn't have that listed.  However, I can state that by cracking the drive's case, I was able to recover ALL of my data from this poorly-designed device and I managed to salvage the internal drive (which has been reformatted to NTFS and is now used as a second backup).

Larks

[Larks]

To be fair . . .

I had claimed 100% recovery of my data, but I ran a checksum on all of the recovered data I mentioned in my last post.  There were a total of 8 files that were not recovered with unchanged checksums.  All were images, and, of course, they are really messed up.  Now I am looking for an application that can adjust the data in a .jpg image to kill the corrupt portion - they were my daughters' dance recital photos.

Larks

[dgturnquist]

UPDATE - After receiving the 'new' Central Axis in Feb. 2009, it worked fine for 60 days, then one of the drives failed.  I purchased a new drive avoiding going through the warrantey process for a 5th time.  Now, 30 days after installing the new drive (which was quite easy to do), the new drive is showing as failed - this problem starts out as a mirroring issue, but after reconfiguring the drive to fix the mirror issue, it fails again within a day or two, followed by a drive failure. When I reboot the system, it says everything is OK, but needs to redo the mirroring again - a cycle that ends by the drive saying it is bad.  My guess is that it is not the drive that is out, but a firmware issue, but just a guess.  I can't imagine I would have this many issues with a commercially sold hard drive.  No signs on this issue happening anywhere else in the forums that I can see, but no question that I can't rely on the Central Axis as even a secondary backup.

[DaveJ15]

I bought this drive at Staples 2 months ago and it failed in this way.  It was making clicking sounds for a week before it showed a flashing light.  I called technical support from their website and they would only replace the drive - not repair.  After reading the posts, I disassembled the drive, and it was as easy as the postings said.  It took me about twenty minutes with two screwdrivers.  There were two metal blocks which I couldn't figure if I needed, but they were attatched to the casing that was holding the actual drive.  I put this drive into my computer and I was able to get data out with Explore2FS.  Thank you all!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

But the problem I have is I can recover 5-10 GB of data (varies) before the Explore2FS crashes and requires a rteboot. The drive just isn't there anymore.  I can't get the whole thing back in one operation.  What dio I do?  Do I reboot 100 times? 

Has anyone had this problem?

[worried]

I have the EXACT same problem as you described, but I am not nearly as "techy" as the rest of the posters with this problem.   Has anyone found an easier solution or has Maxtor provided any remedy to this?  

[EasyUser]

Try to boot your computer with a linux liveCD, I used Slax LiveCD.  Once linux was booted, go to /mnt/sd?5, depends how many hard drives you have in you computer, ? can be a or b or c....  You should be able to copy files to other places.

[morrislevy]

Same here.  I bought my Maxtor Central Axis 1TB about end of January 2008.  It crashed slowly in about June.  I had filled the drive, 10GB free, and noticed it slowly dying as ease of copying new data to it became cumbersome.  It stopped recognizing my user actions, and failed to copy the data.  One day later, upon boot, it blinked red and white steadily, rapidly.  The Maxtor tools failed to recognize the drive, and not seen on the LAN whatsoever.  I have seen all the behavior exhibited in this forum so far, and agree with all points.  Help!?  I have a lot of important data I'd like to recover.  I have a Mac right now, and need to figure out a low-cost way of copying my data without much need for tools.  

[BillKoch]

I had same problem.  Intermittent 'seizures' over a period of 5 months, followed by one day of rapidly

blinking red light.  Some searches for repair but nothing that matched the rapid blinking red light. 

Could not see drive from the network, and I found this thread.  I was convinced that heat was the issue,

so I prepared to remove the drive and put it in my desktop and use explore2fs to recover data.  This is after

I found a data recovery service that quoted me $650. 

Just for yucks I powered it up one more time and it came online fine.  This is after letting it sit overnight.

After about an hour of data recovery work, it became very slow pulling data off.  I powered it down and

let it sit overnight again.  Tried it the next morning after propping it up on blocks so the bottom air vent had

about 1" of air underneath.  That worked pretty good for a while, but then same issue again.

Finally, I flipped the drive upside down so the long edge with the air vent was facing up.  It allowed me

to recovery the last of my 100GB of data, and at this point seems to be working fine.  With an unscientific

assessment, the drive appears to be running cooler than when it was right side up on blocks.

Maybe this will work for someone else before voiding a warranty to recover data.  I still plan to return

the unit for warranty, if only to get a 1TB drive out of it for my desktop.

[picstart]

The mean time before failure is considerably extended if you add an external cooling fan to this device.

Increasing the clearance between the base and the desktop or other support by adding rubber feet helps also.

Now if you use the device outdoors at either of the earth's poles then it probably will work without a fan.

Now Seagate marketing  cares about new customers at least ten times more than it does about existing customers. That's why you can't get this device recalled or your investment refunded. The marketing solution is to slap a new catchy phrase on another similar product and hope you'll forget your defective product was ever made by them. 

[morrislevy]

{Please keep it courteous}

Besides.... so I called them, had a series of MULTIPLE e-mails, and finally they wanted me to submit my device by mail to the Seagate i365 desk for repairs of the ONE YEAR WARRANTEE.  Get this!  Yes its free to replace the hard drive, but they will not recover your files... AND the minimum price for file recovery from them?

$500!  Are you kidding!!!  I will NEVER do business with Maxtor nor Seagate ever again.  Ugh!

Message Edited by pamelaz on 12-02-2009 11:51 AM

[worried]

I've spent so many hours on this...here's where I am and I hope I can get some more help.  

I busted open the Central Axis.  Found it was a SATA drive, and my desktop was not.  So, I bought an enclosure that accepts SATA drive that connects to a laptop I have via USB.  I then fired up UBUNTU Linux CD.  I can see the USB connected drive, but it shows me that drive multiple times - it shows "1,000GB hard disk, 263MB file system", "1,000GB hard disk, 263MB file system" (again), "1,000 GB hard disk, 518MB file system", and "1,000GB hard disk, 999GB file system".   When I try to open any of these icons, I get the following message:  "Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 32: mount: wrongfs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb2,

       missing codepageor helper program, or other error

       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try

       dmesg | tail  or so"

Can anyone help with next steps on this???   

[cpatafio]

Hi All...

I'm happy and sad to see that I'm not alone in the Central Axis saga.  I too purchased a Central Axis 2 TB unit in March of 2009.  After a few months, drive 2 died.  Unfortunately, I had changed the configuration from mirrored to linear so we lost everything.  Thankfully, I changed it back to linear as soon as the replacement drive arrived.  Since that replacement, I've replaced another dead drive as well as the entire unit itself.  Between replacements, the drive would appear to die, I'd open the unit (I've gotten quite good at it!), reseat the cables, fire it up, and rebuild the RAID, and everything works again... for awhile.  Now, even that won't work.

I asked the Seagate Tech if anyone else had reported the thermal issue (one silly little fan, and each drive is too hot to touch!).  He claimed no (yeah, right).  So that's why I'm both happy and sad.  Happy to know I'm not alone... sad to know that Maxtor/Seagate is still denying that a thermal issue exists!

It looks like I'm going to have to revive the unit once more (if possible), try to back it up to an external USB drive, and try to force Maxtor to refund my money (fat chance).  Has anyone had any luck getting a refund?

Good luck to one and all...

Clem

[Albakirk]

Hi all,

I have exactly the same MCA 1TB problem, and just when my other backup network drive is failing too.  My red light is on all the time with a fast-blinking white. Just like others here, but not even shown in the LED key. And from looking around here, I can't understand why Seagate doesn't even deign to reply to these posts on the support forum it hosts! All I know is I'm never buying another Seagate/Maxtor product, and I really think they should at least attempt to answer for leading us into trusting our data to these drives that are apparently universally unreliable. To think that before this I'd only discovered that the MCA didn't serve media as advertised, and fruitlessly asked that Seagate support that claim.

But other than to add my voice to the many others apparently ignored here, I also wondered if anyone had smoothed out the bumps in the data recovery process since the previous posts. I have a lot of data to try to get back and would sure appreciate any updates fom those with prior experience.

Thanks

[EasyUser]

Sorry to hear that.  First, MCA's mediaserver does work.  Second, you can check the following post to recover you data. If you have any question regarding recover your data, post back to the following link. Good luck.

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Maxtor-Shared-Storage-Central/MSS-II-1-TB-Data-Recovery-via-Linux-Knopp...

[cpatafio]

I just wanted to follow up on my last post.  Since that post, I've had to reseat the cables and rebuild the mirror 4 times.  The funny thing is that, even though I have a blinking red status LED, the data is still available!

I also wanted to add that for the last 2 months, I've had the unit sitting with the case open so that it doesn't overheat.  I noticed that the lonely 1" fan that's supposed to cool the unit, only works intermittently.  And, even with the unit open, both drives get too hot to touch after they've been running for any length of time.  Keep in mind that this is the second unit that I've had that exhibits the same exact symptoms!  And Seagate Tech Support claims that they've not heard of any of these issues... YEAH, RIGHT!

Come on guys, 'fess up and help those of us that have spent more time and effort in keeping these units going than they originally cost!

OK... now I'll step down from the soap box...

Clem

[Albakirk]

Thanks, but I'll have to differ with you on the MCA's media server issue. I tried for months to get something workable last year, along with other forum users, with no luck at all getting the server to show up reliably or properly catalog media or getting anything useful out of Seagate, until I finally gave up and just used the drive for data backup. I even seem to remember some kind of newspeak spin about folks being told by tech support that just because it was an advertised feature, that didn't mean it was supported.

Now, less than a year after puchase, the whole drive's failed, and looking into other posts here, I find from researching this issue that it turns out the NAS was never designed to do what it was advertised for, either, due to universal overheating from poor enclosure design and apparently using drives not designed for continuous use.  And I'm not seeing any kind of satisfactory response from Seagate on this issue, either.  Heck, I couldn't even find any reference to what my LEDs suddenly showed (and is apparently common to users here) til I got past all of Seagate's support to this forum, and it turns out folks have been reporting the same behavior for a long time. C'mon Seagate, how 'bout a little something besides a box of headaches for our 350+ bucks?

[krys2fr]

I too have had the same problems and am glad I have these posts. I have received permission from Seagate to do a data recovery myself, so I tore open the casing and installed into my hp compaq dc 7600 convertible. I used explore2fs to recover my files (which took a long time considering the system kept losing the had drive). Now I have formatted the drive to an NTFS system but the computer still loses the drive. Any suggestions? If not I will return the drive for replacement although I am not sure I want another, I would rather have a refund (not likely to happen though).

[MegaMouth]

I just had the same issue and have spent 5 hours today trying to trouble shoot this (of course being a 3 day weekend, the soonest I can talk to support is next Tuesday). I wish I found out about the issues with this product from Maxtor/Seagate proactively through a recall or email notifying me before more damage was done. It's clearly negligence that has caused additional damages in each of our cases. Negligence to supply a product that meets a reasonable standard for data recovery products, and negligence to inform purchasers of issues that have come to light. I think there are enough of us having the same problem with this obviously defective product, which the manufacturer knows is defective by now with years of complaints and a 1/2 star rating on CNET, with almost all of the ratings below 1 star for failure.

[Edited per the community rules and regulations.] for the lost data and costs related to data recovery (they own the data recovery service that wants $500-$650 to save the data caused by their hardware), as well as the costs of a 1TB or 2TB external hard drive depending on which version you own. I'm not litigious by nature, [Edited per the community rules and regulations.]

[RICHARD51]

Frist-off WHY the heck are these people in Business then?? I too lost ( 500GB of things) all my things on this poorly made Network Central Axis. I wish I knew how to do what this man did. I think we the buyers of this storage unit should start writing letter to the places that sells and manufactured these things, and try to get them OUT OF BUSINESS!!!!!! I also think they should retrieve out data for FREE. Instead of trying to make us pay them $ 700.00 to $ 2500.00 just to get our info. out of threre pieces crud (or you could say shoot in here). They may send me a new one but I'll just put into the garbage can't trust them ANY more.....

Richard K

[tooinch]

Hi Larks,

can you tell me what Linux reader you use to recover your data?

[dexter80]

I had the same problem with my Maxtor Central Axis 1TB drive. I fixed it.

1. I removed a HDD form MCA, then connected it to PC.
2. With 'Victoria' program i scanned a surface with 'Remap' option.
3. Then I copied first four partitions to another drive with 'EASEUS Todo Backup'.

4. I created the empty ext3 partition (main storage) at the end of disk. You can copy it from old HDD, but I don't needed the data, just working device only so I created it empty (faster).
5. And finaly I put a new HDD into MCA.
6. I also made few more ventilation holes on top of chassis to prevent overheating again.

If someone need I have this backup to revitalize MCA with another HDD.

[Ananas]

I'd really appreciate if you could help me with that backup, dexter80.

[Street_Preacher]

dexter80-

What is this progrom you use to scan the surface with the Remap option?  I  am having to recover data from my failed MCA drive.  The computer shop I took it to, could only get it to stay recognized for a couple of minutes at a time.

Street_Preacher