Peter's Gekko

We bought a Maxtor Network Storage 200Gig drive less than a year ago. It is dying today. Managed to get most of our files off it. Self-diagnostics hang it. General comments: the drive always seemed very slow to respond to data access requests. Beware that it is nearly impossible to access the drive with data recovery software, because most software cannot access a network drive. Also, opening the case voids the warranty, so you can't get the drive out of the case. Had trouble with a second one at another location: Word and Excel files locked even after drive restarted: they can't be renamed, moved, deleted. I don't recommend these drives for business.

Glen, the problems with accessing files could be due to secuirty settings. The Maxtor uses the local windows credentials of the user, also when you're part of a domain. Which can lead to quite confusing situations.

Having to choose between losing the data or my warranty I would go for my data. Usualy any dead drive wakes up when stripped from its surroundings. Be it networing case or a overheated laptop.

Otoh where's the backup? I don't recommend business without that :)

I have also the Maxtor shared storage, great performance, no problems at all...until I had a usb-printer connected. At first the installation seemed fine. But when I restarted my computer I didn't have acces to the printer anymore???? I've tryed to get a network-connection with the printer but I can't get this done. Do you have any clue what I'm doing wrong?

Hope you can help me out,

TIA,

Martine.

I have used a printer on the Maxtor, which worked fine. I think you have a security issue, you have to set permissions to use the printer. Maxtor does not accept blank passwords and takes the local machine's user credentials even when the machine is part of a domain. The latter is quite a gotcha :)

Hi Peter,

I too was seduced by the idea of a Maxtor NAS MSS drive (320GB) wirelessly connected to my laptops through my Netgear router. However, although it installed and worked fine, after uploading some files to it, I can no longer see it from my laptops (Mac and PC), even when these are plugged directly into the router via ethernet.

I have a printer using another ethernet port in the router, which works fine and is visible through the router.

I've tested and switched around the cables, pinged it from the router and connected it directly to the laptop (all of which works well). So why is the router somehow stopping my computer from seeing the drive?

I can't even access the Web UI.

Bizarre but true.

Many thanks,

Graham

Security ?

Vista works lousy with my Maxtor. I have to supply username/password every time. When I check remeber password I won't have access next time I boot Vista. What works the is clearing the network password for the maxtor. It's somewhere in Vista user management.

At the start of a new year, whose name is in many a new product, it's a good moment for some small

Hi Peter,

I'm in the process of setting up a Maxtor Shared Storage 320 GB External.  I hard-connected my desktop tower to my network router, and everything seemed fine, but after I installed their drive management software and was on the WUI page, I had problems getting it to accept my password (alpha and #, should be fine).  It then displayed a page saying I should "print out for my records" but the username: and password: fields were blank.  Do you have any idea why it was doing this?  Do you know how to access the Web User Interfaec page again?  Because every time it prompts me for my u/pwd and blank ain't cutting it.

Thanks so much!  Let's hope it's a problem on my end and not on the part of Maxtor's.  Though if it was the latter, I would be pretty PO'd.

I don't know. The user authentication is something maxtor specific, built in. Doesn't work well with Vista either. Everytime it keeps asking for the username password. WHen I ask Vista to remember the apssword the Maxtor will not accept it on my next vist. To fix that you have to clear the creedentials from the Vista network credentilas cache.