Maxtor's Shared Storage Does NAS At Home

Data Storage With Redundancy For Home Use

A loss of data can be prevented in normal operation, but all of the measures that can be taken do not replace the need for regular backups. The use of at least two hard drives in a RAID 1 configuration enables the mirroring of information should one of the drives fail.

If you take both of these criteria into consideration—lower power consumption than a full-scale computer and the redundant storage of data—you will soon come to the conclusion that a NAS device is the best possible compromise. This storage technology has already been used by large businesses for a number of years, and is now making its way into SMBs and even into home environments.

Saving To Two Hard Drives

NAS devices used in businesses generally contain at least four hard drives. To accommodate smaller organizations, particularly with regard to price, NAS devices for the Small Office / Home Office (SOHO) sector and the private user are now being offered with one or two hard drives. In both instances, the potential buyer is still able to purchase units with hard drives already pre-installed by the manufacturer. Pure NAS cases without pre-installed drives can also still be purchased, thus reducing prices even more. It is even cheaper if you decide to go for a NAS case with just one hard drive slot. For the purposes of data security, a NAS device with two drives is preferable to one with a single drive.

RAID Modes For Home Use

Until very recently, RAID technology was mainly used in large companies and mostly required special controllers that are not only very expensive, but also require specialized knowledge. Now this technology is being included in more and more lower-priced units. The implementation of RAID capabilities into hard drive controllers on motherboards means that this technology is also available for private users. And this can also be seen with NAS devices. The user interfaces have been made more user-friendly. In addition to simply setting up drives and user accounts on the NAS devices, it is also possible to easily configure the various RAID modes without the need for a storage background.

In order to see how capable these NAS devices really are, we have decided to use the Maxtor Shared Storage II as an example. The following pages will reveal the impression this unit left behind, and how it performed in our tests.

Marcel Binder
  • badboy4dee
    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
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  • deck
    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...
    Reply
  • serp9000
    "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.
    Reply
  • What's the point of the tiny images where I can't read anything?
    Reply
  • hellwig
    largerimagespleaseWhat'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.
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  • snarfies1
    serp9000If 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.
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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?
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  • oldmangamer
    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.
    Reply
  • xxsk8er101xx
    Buy this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707125Buy your drives.
    Call it a day.
    Reply
  • 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

    Reply