Seagate goes 1TB with Maxtor Shared Storage II

Seagate knows that you can never have too much storage space at your disposal, which is why the company's just bulked up its well-received NAS line with the 1TB Maxtor Shared Storage II. Like other products of the same ilk, the SS II allows up to 20 connected Mac or Windows PCs to send and receive data to and from the two 7,200RPM 500GB hard drives, which can also be configured in a RAID 1 array for an extra level of protection. A high-speed Gigabit Ethernet connection should ensure rapid file transfers, and two built-in USB ports allow you to connect a printer or other peripheral device for sharing among multiple users. You're also getting UPnP support here, so with the proper adapters you can stream tunes, vids, and pics to compatible networked A/V gear throughout your pad. The Shared Storage II is scheduled for release sometime this month, but such a capacious device doesn't come cheap: expect to throw down around $900 if you're interested in this whole-house storage and backup solution.

[Jono Cono @ Jul 7th 2006 7:23PM]

What fun, now that's a functional product that can be put to good use!

[Jarrod Turner @ Jul 7th 2006 10:12PM]

Wow no firewire, not even 400. They just missed out on a whole market,
I was excited for about 5 seconds.

[Blair @ Jul 7th 2006 10:21PM]

Well it IS called a NAS (Network Attacked Storage)...maybe that's why there's no need for a firewire port, because its connected over the network!

[rendy @ Jul 7th 2006 10:54PM]

cool... but too expensive for me, :(

[tiuk @ Jul 8th 2006 12:01AM]

I don't get these NAS solutions that offer no redundancy. I'm sorry, I know this provides the best cost/gigabyte ratio, but come on. There's no way I'm putting a terabyte of data on two drives without redundancy. Not to mention you could build a NAS with like 320 GB drives in RAID5 for the same price or cheaper.

[John @ Jul 8th 2006 12:14AM]

$900 actually isn't that unreasonable, it's less than I would've expected and signals good news for storage geeks like myself... just a matter of time before this is a manageable $500 (of course, the 2TB model will be $900 by then...)

[Harry @ Jul 8th 2006 12:23AM]

Would be great if we know the size of this beast. It looks gigantic in the pic, if i could get it, i think i might have more trouble finding 'space' to put it than fill up the space in it!

[dave @ Jul 8th 2006 1:14AM]

by missing an entire market I'll assume you're talking about the Mac market? no firewire and you're disappointed? your Mac (I'm also assuming you're a Mac owner because firewire isn't as popular on desktop PC's), if it has firefire, probably has gigabit ethernet. most of us are using firewire for DV or plain file storage. in these cases you're better off with gig-e. so grab a cheap gig switch and forgot about firewire!

[Charles @ Jul 8th 2006 1:26AM]

Jarrod, they make a triple interface vesion, too. USB, fw400, fw800.
Harry, it's 5.4 x 3.9 x 8.5 inches (136 x 65 x 217 mm) 5.8 lbs.
Google, people...

[anonymous coward @ Jul 8th 2006 1:27AM]

5.4 x 3.9 x 8.5 inches (136 x 65 x 217mm) So not to big really. Anybody else thinking what i am?
Really Big Tivo like setup??? Think so much space i could just keep recording and never actually have to watch the show cause the recording would never stop. EVER

[Tony Rayo @ Jul 8th 2006 1:44AM]

I wish we could cut down on some of these repeated posts. Yes, it would be cheaper to buy/build a 500$ PC and fill it with 500$ worth of HD (which could probably get you 2TB or so, depending on config etc etc). That's not the point of NAS devices though. They are ment for the prosumer/professional market that needs to just be able to plug a standalone device into an ethernet port and have that be the end of it. It's always cheaper to do it yourself, so please, for baby Jebus, take it at face value.

If you have the need to rant and rave about price, find any Xbox 360 chatroom and mention the PS3's entry price point =p. (btw, even if you really dislike the PS3, you should pre-order one ASAP... from the numbers we've seen so far they will sellout on day one just like the 360, then you can sell it on eBay for 1000$ and buy this NAS device, hizzah!)

[Danny @ Jul 8th 2006 11:06AM]

Wow, that's a whole lot of quick sharing for your complete John Denver collection and the like.

[Daniel Eber @ Jul 8th 2006 1:04PM]

this is kinda expensive, you can build one for less:
http://www.personaltechpipeline.com/shared/article/printablePipelineArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=5C4XL1XJULCV2QSNDBCCKH0CJUMEKJVN?articleId=184400017
i found this iste about 6 months ago and it backed up my idea that all company made NAS storage devices are too expensive. also, of you use this method, you can use a redundant RAID to secure the integrity of you data some more. Just my thoughts

[Ensal Sharen @ Jul 8th 2006 1:15PM]

Actually, I think the price discussion _is_ relevant, and the reason is because you need a PC front-end _anyway_ in order to do something useful with this.

rsync is becoming more and more popular as a tool do move data intra-home and from home to offsite backup (rsync.net, swissdisk, etc.). Even if you are only rsyncing a small amount of data, to even _have_ front end functionality like that you need a box attached to it, and if it is to happen on a schedule, that needs to not be your laptop or primary machine.

So either they need to build rsync (it's ubiquitous enough that this isn't a silly suggestion) into the firmware, or you need a front end server on it anyway to provide it. As long as that is the case, I am going to get a 3-4U server and put 16-24 cheap SATA 400s in it, etc.

[Hojimoto @ Jul 8th 2006 3:32PM]

Eh. I just built a 1TB SATA II RAID 5 array for under 900 bucks with some clearance (yet proven reliable) parts. No thanks.

[alec @ Jul 8th 2006 10:54PM]

Price indeed. I bought a 1.2ghz athlon box for $120. This box includes megabit ethernet, sound capability, four usb ports with a front-end by which to configure them, and the ability to run any os (commercial or otherwise) except Mac. I bought four 250GB, 7200rpm drives from Woot.com for $54.99 each including s+h. The grand total for this machine is $340. It is assuredly larger than this NAS device, but I could have bought a similar machine in a shuttle case for roughly the same amount of money. Instead of getting storage with the possibility of two peripherals for $900, I got the same storage, four peripherals, audio and video outputs, ability to expand to more storage, ability to add new functions (via PCI), ability to install further servers (web, email, etc) on the box, and of course, the ability to configure all of this without using another box. Also note that I can run an X server (or some other remote desktop service) on my storage box in case I need to access its GUI remotely. I got all these functions and more for $340, less than half the price of the NAS box. Even assuming my time were worth $50 an hour, I would have to spend 11 hours configuring the desktop to make it worth it. It takes about 20min max to install the drives and 2 hours max to install linux. This NAS unit is not worth the money.

[Padriac @ Jul 9th 2006 4:01PM]

Some people just don't want to have to build their computers, price be damned. Did you build your own car? I'm sure there are tons of gearheads out there who could have built your car for less.

Tell you what, I'll pay you your $50 an hour to build my computers, but I'll do the lInux installing myself. That's $16.65 per computer. Get to work :)

[Wolvereen @ Jul 10th 2006 12:54PM]

RE: Pricing, building your own box is not the same as having a stand alone product. You use less power during operation for a NAS, plus you (should) have zero mantenance on it once it is configured.

[MP @ Jul 21st 2006 10:14PM]

What do you folks think about Infrant ReadyNAS NV in comparison to this?

http://www.infrant.com/products/products_details.php?name=ReadyNAS%20NV

[Trevor @ Oct 1st 2006 8:03PM]

Hmm... $900? Check out the Infrant Ready NAS (www.infrant.com). You can get that with no drives for $600, then plop in a couple of 500GB drives for $400, and you've got a better solution for the same price. The Infrant is highly configurable and would have 2 spare bays... Their NAS supports volume expansion, so just drop in more drives and your storage automatically expands. Run in RAID 0,1,5.

I've got two of them and they're AWESOME. Built in FTP, RSYNC, HTTP, HTTPS, UPnP, AFP, Samba, iTunes server, and more.

[TerraMedics @ Nov 3rd 2006 6:58PM]

Warning: this drive failed after only 3 weeks of very moderate use. All 300GB of data disappeared in a second. Although the drive was set up as Raid-1 (mirroring), the data could not be extracted because it was saved in Linux format. The drive's OS did not warn about the problem becuase it was on the same disk that failed! Support did not help because they said "we sold you a drive not data". Also, they did not allow us to open the drive without a taking our credit card info and a proper authorization and in a condition to put the drive back together as it was other before! The drive was so complecated that there was no way to open it without breaking the certain plastic components. So brifely, what's the point of stroing data on Raid-1 if you can't break the mirror or have utility to extract the data. This drive is a data toilet until Seagate gets its acts together and create a data extraction utility and stop worrying about reverse-engineering by making the drive easy to open. If you had the same problem please reply. We need three similar incidents to file class-action lawsuit and make Maxtor pay for this false advertizing and marketing fraud (Raid-1 means data easy to recover)!

[Paul Veryupset @ Jan 30th 2007 1:27AM]

My unit failed after only a couple of days. I tried to open it and see if I could replace one of the 500Gb drive (I had configured RAID 1 which was the main reason I bought this unit). I discovered the sticker warning that warranty would be lost if the unit was open!!! Shame on Maxtor: This is nothing else than corporate America greed at its best.
Thanks to Maxtor, I just wasted 3 days, figuring out how to setup the system for a network of 4 machines and then backing up 400Gb before one drive failed. All backups are lost. (I obviously cannot send my unit to Maxtor with my company's data on one disk).I then found your post through Google. The Maxtor packaging clearly says that RAID 1 comes for added security, which is obviously a lie in the case of Maxtor as if one drive fails you lose everything.

[James Cook @ Jun 13th 2007 12:04PM]

My company bought 3 of these drives in Nov.2006 to back up data for server rebuilds. 2 would be accessible for data by users, 1 would be offsite backup. All 3 units have failed!! Of the 2 units we set up for users in house, 1st failed Mar 17, 2nd in early April(2 weeks apart). The 3rd was brought back in house after the 1st failure. 1&2 were mirrored, 3 was RAID 0. I contacted our reseller about warranty info and RMAs since it hasn't been that long, and he, too, told me that I should definitely not try to open the device because it will crack and void the warranty. We regretfully sent back 1&2 (still containing company data) with an RMA as of June 1, 2007, to be replaced. Just in time to find the 3rd drive failed too, on June 7!!! We are going to give these units 1 more chance after replacement, but I do not recomend this item for anyone.

[MadatMaxtor @ Jun 17th 2007 10:39PM]

DANGER: I strongly discourage others from purchasing a MAXTOR Shard Storage II drive. I have one of these 1 TB toasters and it failed after 8 months of light use. It is configured as RAID 1 (mirrored) which is an utterly useless feature as there is no software available to recover data from the mirror drive. My warranty will be voided if I open the case to attempt recovery on my own.

Maxtor should be sued for false advertising and forced to pay for professional data recovery service.

[Nigel Spiers @ Jun 8th 2007 10:37AM]

I have 2 of these units, both set to Raid 1 and both have failed within 1 day of being used. Luckly we were only putting them through their paces for reliablility and no sensative data.

Really amazed that these units failed. Can not be detected on the network anywhere, full IP address scans did not find them. Even a direct cross over lead to my PC failed to see the unit.

I do not recommend these devices.

[Antoanto @ Aug 30th 2007 2:29PM]

Stay away from this drive if you are using a Mac. Maxtor claims it to be Mac compatible, but it isn't true, since some files, named under OS X conventions, are not recognised by the drive, thus not copied. In 1 Terabyte you can have hundreds of these files and, most important, they are very often created automatically by applications and you have no control over the file name.

It just happened to me, and I discovered that this is a known issue and there is no solution.
I can't understand how they can sell that drive as Mac-compatible.

[Richard @ Sep 22nd 2007 6:57AM]

There are people who actually get paid more than $30 and hour and who have no time to stuff around with half the suggestions posted. The type of customer this product is aimed at just wants it to work, they have netiher the time nor inclination to stuff around with hardisks and installing file servers. This product fits that market segment and from what I can see does a very good job of it.

[redwine @ Dec 19th 2007 11:29AM]

This drive failed me twice.

If you are thinking about a legal action against Seagate please let me know. I don't think I have time to start one myself but will happily join to one.