Legacy Network Products

[AlanM]

Please check out our new online Network drive troubleshooter for help with your network drive.  It might be able to answer your question before having to post and wait for an answer.

[picstart]

This helps for trouble customers may be having but does little for the trouble seagate mamagment has in allowing a product with as many deficiencies off the production line. This may be an example of trick and trap were specifications are created to meet managements sales goals and the customer is trapped and tricked into accepting that sleep mode doesn't work, high heat reduced longevity ( extra thick pads under the device helps airflow a lot) and support's response isn't to make things work but concentrates on removing documentation and sales literature that were misleading. I paid much less than $100 for my 1TB central axis so I can rationalize the value  but it must be frustrationg for the early adopters that paid full price. A trouble shooting tool for Seagate management would help them see the traps they have created. Something like look at the call volume look at the forums look at the returns to stores after customers purchase look at the warranty repair  look at the rapid price drop in resales etc.

[terblah]

I couldn't agreee more with the first reply. 

The subject item [Central Axis (9GY5A8-500] was recently returned for repair orreplacement. This is second unit that has failed for me within six months. The unit was returnedwith no action taken because someone believed the unit had been tampered with.Here’s the situation. The unit runs quite hot [my experience and noted inproduct reviews by others] and I placed four small rubber feet on the bottom ofthe device in an attempt to promote better airflow by convection through thebottom vent slots. Lower temperatures promote a more favorable MTBF. When theunit failed [AGAIN] I removed the feet and sent it back. A small piece of thescrew cover sticker adhered to the adhesive of the rubber foot. I provided Seagate with photos of the rubber feet.

Why in God’s name would I be compelled to tamper with a unitthat has a 5-year warranty and is only several months old? The screw is noteven completely uncovered. On the other hand, perhaps the warranty durationdoesn’t correlate well with your expected reliability of the unit. On thatbasis, I can see why you would be inclined to deny warranty claims for aproduct that clearly has field problems. Your own hosted web users’ forumconfirms this!

This product has been a huge waste of time for me. Ihave greatly diminished confidence in this product as well as Seagate / Maxtoras a company. Please repair or replace the unit or preferably refund thepurchase price of the device.

Here is the replay from Seagate.

I apologize for the inconvenience, but after review of the pictures and the typed statement from you, we will not be able to replace your drive.  The "tampering" they were referring to is the feet you put on the drive.  You put a couple of them over the label; more specifically the serial number.  We will not be able to replace your drive; your warranty is voided.  The drive will be returned to you again.

Conclusion: Avoid this product as well as Seagate / Maxtor in general. 

[deesbek]

I was an "early adopter" of a Maxtor Shared Storage II - 1TB dual drive product.

Six months ago I would agree with the sentiments of both posters above.  But the experiences of the last couple post work evenings have changed my tune.

The drive constantly rebooted, files would disappear - but reappear on reboot, I would get virus messages on boot up when the drive was completely empty. I was unable to delete files etc. However, I never lost any data and I have had the drive now over 3 years.  It has spent 8 months in Timor as a file server for Australian troops without major mishap, except the issues I outlined above.

Recently the drive dropped off the network entirely, I ran a DHCP server and a second nic in my computer so I could attach it directly and I could not get it to request an IP for about a week. 

Then the orange led started flashing, one orange, three green, then repeat the pattern.  At this stage the drive was in RAID0 mode, I have read somewhere that it is not proper RAID0 but I have not confirmed this myself.  I was sick of all the files I could not delete and which I had moved to a temp directory.  I could move them but not delete them.  My data was backed up so I thought what the heck, I'll set up a mirror and wipe the whole thing in the process.

The mirroring worked fine, the flashing lights disappeared.

As soon as I copied ~200GB of data onto the drive I got more flashing: one orange one green.  I took the unit apart and ran some diagnostics while the drives were attached to my Vector Linux box, no errors anywhere everything, just fine with the Seagate Baracuda drives. I was also impressed with the internal design of the MSS2 - ergonomic and easy to take apart.  I extracted the original "firmware" which is really software as it sits on the harddrives, then updated to v 3.1.28, this did not help the flashing lights; one green one orange continued.

I then read that Seagate released 3.1.28 as open source, well it was Linux to begin with so why not.  One finds that a lot of dedicated devices run a modified version of Linux or some version of a free Unix system like FreeBSD, one example are NOKIA firewalls. 

After some reading I upgraded to the OpenMSS "firmware" (16MB sitting on a 500MB partition and backed up to another 500 MB partition) and could SSH to the MSS2, or telnet if I did not mind the connection being insecure.  I fixed the flashing lights with help from this forum and my data is happy.

The MSS2 has its shortcomings (for example I can never get more than 12% utilisation out of the gig interface) but with the release of the firmware and by allowing the community to tailor and sabilise devices which are no longer under warranty as well as providing a fairly evenly moderate forum where criticism is tolerated they have redeemed themselves in my eyes.

So, don't judge them too harshly when you are considering your next purchase.  Also I am not affiliated with them in any way, I run my own network security/penetration testing business.

Have a good one.

[technoid]

Yep, just plain junk.  Mine was only 3 weeks old, but after a terrible experience with their so called "tech support", I decided to cut my losses and just destroy the device when the drive wouldn't come out gently.  The drive was dead, too so no saving data.  It was somewhat satisfying to destroy the object, but it might have been more fun to just shred a bunch of 20's!

What horrible customer service, but I guess that's normal with tech companies anymore.... Who am I kidding?  It's normal for any large company to give as little customer service as possible.

[bigozone]

The MSS2 is the most useless product i have ever had the displeasure of working on.  It's stripped down version of an operating system is so flawed.  I'm glad only my time has been wasted on these devices,  and thank gosh i was able to use my 30+ years of PC repair knowledge to follow the instructions for recovering data via UNIX...   Which just goes to show the device is crud,  but when the non functioning device was disassembled and the 2 Seagate drives were hooked to a PC and booted with a KNOPPIX Linux CD i had access to the owner's data in 5 minutes and after formatting a 3rd drive, i was able to drag and drop the entire RAID-0's contents onto the new drive while i slept.

The only good thing is i now have 2 500GB drives and if it weren't a family member who owned the device I'd be charging over $500 for the data recovery.   And that would be a deal when compared to Seagate's data recovery costs.

Seagate, I hope the rest of your business is just as successful as the MSS2 product line and lives just as long.

[KWP]

This is more a peculiar statement about Seagate and how it identifies Maxtor as a partner.  Maxtor drives are identified as  "Legacy Network Products."  While the word legacy refers principally to things handled down (keepsakes), traditions (attending a parent's or sibling's school) or proceeds from a will/things left behind, etc., Dictionary.com also has an additional definition for it:

"of or pertaining to old or outdated computer hardware, software, or data that, while still functional, does not work well with up-to-date systems."

In this instance, Seagate is making it clear that Maxtor products are outdated.  I also thing that from a marketing standpoint, using the term "legacy" helps to distance Seagate (by inference and/or connotation) from the product -- not that I'm trying to defend them.  Please know Maxtor is less than ______ (and here you can put in any appropriate word that suits you).  Obviously, Seagate didn't buy Maxtor for its products; rather it bought it to expand manufacturing capacity.  It should have canceled Maxtor products as soon as the acquisition was completed.  But, of course, there was quick money to be made on........fools........like us.