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Conclusion: A NAS Device For Beginners

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1:20 AM - 09/25/2008 by Marcel Binder

The Maxtor Shared Storage II is a solid NAS device for home users and small offices, requiring just a little basic knowledge to set up. Beginners can quickly achieve their aim, making a lot of storage space available on the network without the need for extensive configuration.

The data transfer rates are respectable for many applications and sufficient for most uses in a home network. The same applies to the integrated media server. It is possible, however, that users with more complex demands may find that they are missing out on extended configuration options. User administration functions have also been kept simple.

The RAID 1 function appears to be out of place, because the housing is constructed in such a way that the user cannot access the hard drives inside the unit without breaking the warranty seal. In addition, the side walls are connected to the housing top with small catches that break off when the housing is opened by an inexperienced user, which means a user is unable to replace a defective drive themselves without voiding the warranty. As a result, the use of the RAID 1 function is put into question. A JBOD configuration or simple interconnection of drives might have been a better option.

The Maxtor Easy Manage software is also relatively basic, and the range of functions available designed more for beginners. Experienced users may prefer not to bother installing the software, and instead set up the NAS device using its Web interface. This leaves you without the convenient backup function, but power users probably already have their own backup tools anyway.

Maxtor Shared Storage II
The Maxtor Shared Storage II offers a range of functions designed for small office environment and home users. The more demanding user will be disappointed by the limited range of functions available. Beginners, on the other hand, get a simple to operate and solid NAS device.
  • Advantages
  • Disadvantages
    • Well-built
    • Easy to use
    • Offers plenty of storage space
    • Questionable RAID 1 function
    • Few configuration options
    • FTP and NFS protocols are not supported

Talkback
badboy4dee 09/25/2008 2:54 PM
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kwl review for this device. I wonder though if it allowed for mtu/jumbo, vpn security config n such. Prob not but that woulda been a nice touch.

The Silent Majority

deck 09/25/2008 3:21 PM
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These home NAS storage solutions need raid 5 and support for at least 4 drives. Until then my old AMD 500 will continue to chug away...

serp9000 09/25/2008 5:08 PM
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"But the fact that a user may wish to replace the drives has not been taken into consideration. Should a drive fail and you need to replace it yourself, you’ll have to take the unit apart and break the warranty seal."

If a drive fails and it's still under warranty, it would only seem logical to invoke the warranty protection and get a free drive. If a drive fails and it isn't under warranty, then breaking the warranty seal wouldn't be a problem. Doesn't seem like a particularly important detail.

Anonymous 09/25/2008 5:11 PM
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What's the point of the tiny images where I can't read anything?

hellwig 09/25/2008 5:54 PM
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largerimagesplease :
What's the point of the tiny images where I can't read anything?


"...And so, with a clash of lightning that split apart the heavens, and with a mighty voice, God said unto Abraham: 'Click on the image twice you doofus!'".

I do agree that clicking on the image once to get the main image page, and then a SECOND time to get the full-sized image is stupid, but if they were to insert the full-sized image in the main article, the article would be pretty hard to read through.

I had one of those little warranty stickers on my old Mactor One-Touch. With a razor and some patience you can get that sucker off without breaking it.

snarfies1 09/25/2008 6:28 PM
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serp9000 :
If a drive fails and it's still under warranty, it would only seem logical to invoke the warranty protection and get a free drive.



Except that this will involve sending your still perfectly functional drive away, where it will be perused by whoever while you have no access to it yourself. Not an acceptable solution to me. This is yet another FAIL solution for home NAS, I'm afraid.

Anonymous 09/25/2008 6:38 PM
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serp9000
the problem is you'll have to do without your data while you wait for the warranty work. do you really trust sending out your one good copy?

oldmangamer 09/25/2008 6:56 PM
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Let me see...Raid 1 means you can replace a failed drive with a new one and the second drive (the "mirror") still contains the data. But now, you have to replace the failed drive so the mirror can be rebuilt...but you cannot without voiding the warranty. Do I have this straight? If so, this is simply a disaster waiting to happen. Especially with the high drive failure rate reported by customers. Still waiting for a good home NAS.

xxsk8er101xx 09/25/2008 7:59 PM
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Buy this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817707125
Buy your drives.
Call it a day.

kschoche 09/25/2008 8:05 PM
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Performance is lackluster at best, especially in raid-0! Let me rephrase, performance is TERRIBLE.
The chances of the working disk getting damaged while shipping the whole box back for a single failed drive are WAY higher than the chances I'll damage it opening it, but considering the literacy of the users of such a slow NAS... I'll stick with my homebrew NAS kthx

xxsk8er101xx 09/25/2008 8:06 PM
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Or this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817332017

Use Raid 10 it's just as secure as RAID 5. you need 4 drives for RAID 10 however. use the last slot has a spare.

xxsk8er101xx 09/25/2008 8:09 PM
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You gotta go e-sata for performance. Then just share the drive for other users to access it. At the minimum you need a gigabit connection but for that to work you need gigabit through out your house.

Otherwise you're stuck at 100Mbit. USB is 480Mbit for a comparison of theoretical throughput.

kschoche :
Performance is lackluster at best, especially in raid-0! Let me rephrase, performance is TERRIBLE.The chances of the working disk getting damaged while shipping the whole box back for a single failed drive are WAY higher than the chances I'll damage it opening it, but considering the literacy of the users of such a slow NAS... I'll stick with my homebrew NAS kthx


kschoche 09/25/2008 9:46 PM
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eSATA will only work for computers w/in a few feet of the NAS. GigE through the house isnt that hard, just make sure you have a GigE switch somewhere, most recently built/wired houses have GigE wiring, its been pretty standard in terms of wiring for some time now. Cost of USB wiring throughout the house pretty much knocks that out. So GigE or .. well to be honest the performance on this system was so bad it'd be fine on 100Mb with the exception of only one graph which showed > 14MB/s results.

m3d 09/25/2008 10:43 PM
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What were they thinking when they implemented Raid-1? The whole point is to be able to easily replace the defective drive, have the NAS rebuild it as soon as possible, and have some peace of mind that your data is again sort of safe. Now they want a customer to entrust their valuable data and send it off to who knows where to be viewable whoever.
Thats a deal breaker.

serp9000 09/25/2008 10:47 PM
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I suppose my imperfect knowledge of RAID arrays doomed me. I assumed that you would still be able to remove the data from the one working drive. Big fail on my part, it seems.

m3d 09/26/2008 1:52 AM
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Sure you can remove the data from the working drive but that would entail a user who has more than 500GBs of it to keep a backup drive for a backup solution. HDD are pretty cheap now a days, but nonetheless that in my opinion defeats the purpose of having raid1.

shovel 09/26/2008 6:51 AM
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I've had one of these units (the 320GB version) for over a year. I was after a simple, small, low power NAS box that could sit on my home network to store & share my families MP3 collection. I only use the Web interface to set it up (I don't load any software on my PC/s) and don't use the raid mode at all.

It works OK, but it is slow and has some quirks with media player (9/10/11 on 4 PCs) when playing files (VLC doesn't seem to have the same problem though). I also automatically clone my work to the unit every hour just as another repository. The unit gives the perception that it's underpowered (CPU wise, I assume it's some embedded processor running linux?)

One of the main reasons I bought this unit was that is was cheap & had an external USB HDD & Printer connector. I haven't used the printer port(yet), but I did buy an external eSata/USB2 drive enclosure in which I put a 500GB drive. I can plug this into the NAS box for extra storage or I can also plug the same unit(when required) into the eSata port on a couple of my PC's if I need some temporary extra(fast) storage(sometimes for video editing/converting across drives).

I'd give the unit 7/10.

spacecat56 09/26/2008 7:58 PM
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My smaller/earlier Maxtor SSII has a severely disfunctional mediabolic UPnP server that is compatible with pretty much nothing and even fails tests in Intel UPnP validation suite. You seem to have just given the UPnP server in this NAS a "pass" based on its documentation... you really ought to test it and tell us if actually works.

JonnyDough 09/27/2008 4:47 AM
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Quote :For the purposes of data security, a NAS device with two drives is preferable to one with a single drive.


For the purposes of data security, a NAS device with THREE drives is preferable to one with only two drives. Raid-1 with 3 drives FTW.

I don't know why it's so difficult for an empty Raid-1 box with 3 drive slots and GB LAN at a reasonable price to come to market. You would think that a simple Raid-1 controller chip in a plain black aluminum box would be cheap. Not $500.

Anonymous 09/28/2008 12:58 PM
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Just reading about this NAS solution in other pages a found the comments and reviews from amazon customers: selfexplicatived. http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-STM3 [...] B000GOUE3S


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