Burned by the Fine Print

[Jason Dunn]

Before I purchase a technology product, I normally do a fair amount of research to make sure it's exactly what I'm looking for. Specifically, I look for reviews, read the online manuals, and scour over the specs. However, every so often I'll buy something on first impressions without doing the research, largely on the hunch that it will do what I need. Sometimes that results in me getting burned; this is one of those times.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/maxtor-burnedbythefineprint.jpg" /><br /><br />I needed a large external hard drive, specifically for storing images of my PCs created with <a href="http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/">Acronis TrueImage</a>. These images are often in the 20 to 40 GB range. I had initially purchased a 300 GB hard drive and an external enclosure, but upon seeing the <a href="http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.ba88f6d7cf664718376049b291346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Products/Network%20Storage/Maxtor%20Shared%20Storage%20Family/Maxtor%20Shared%20Storage&productview=Overview">Maxtor Shared Storage</a> drive, I thought it would be more advantageous to have a large drive that any of my computers could access over the network. Of particular interest to me was this feature as mentioned on the Maxtor site: "2 USB ports let you add shared printers or extra drives". The idea of adding two more external drives and having a massive gob of network-based storage sounded great. So I bought it.<br /><br />I've been having my office renovated and as such my work life has been in chaos (you've probably noticed the slowdown in posts here lately). That also means I haven't been properly set up to use the Maxtor NAS drive until recently. I took a 300 GB external hard drive and connected it to the Maxtor NAS, excited that I was going to have 600 GB of storage available anywhere on my network. I was confused when it didn't work, so I started reading through the manual and came upon an ugly bit of information: <b>only FAT32 formatted drives are supported</b>. This immediately put a kink in my plans, because FAT32 only supports file sizes up to 4 GB in size. What I didn't immediately realize was the real show-stopper: FAT32 partitions are limited to 32 GB in size, meaning I'd have to take that 300 GB drive and hack it up into nine different partitions. Ridiculous! Who uses FAT32 any more? It's an antique format and wholly inadequate in our world of 100+ GB hard drives.<br /><br />Nowhere on the <a href="http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.ba88f6d7cf664718376049b291346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Products/Network%20Storage/Maxtor%20Shared%20Storage%20Family/Maxtor%20Shared%20Storage&productview=Features">Maxtor product page</a> or on the <a href="http://www.memoryexpress.com/index.php?PageTag=&page=file&memx_menu=EmbedProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=5915&SID=">product page of the store I bought it from</a> is this mentioned. A massive limitation like this should be listed immediately after the external hard drive feature is mentioned. Because the store I bought it from only has a seven day return policy and I didn't discover this until day 38, I'm stuck with this product I spent $459 CND on and can't use in the way I wanted to.<br /><br />The Maxtor NAS itself is an impressive product, and I imagine I'll still get some good use out of it, but I feel burned by the fine print. Has anything similar happened to you?<br /><br /><b>UPDATE:</b> Thanks to some helpful comments from readers, I was able to get the external drive formatted in FAT32 using a bootable CD (<a href="http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/">Acronis Disk Director</a>) and can now access it from the Maxtor NAS. The 4GB file limit is still there, which is irritating but not a show-stopper. I still stand by my assertion, however, that Maxtor needs to mention the FAT32 limitation on their Web site.

[yada88]

I have a few responses to this. The first is, certain credit card companies will back you up past the return window, as I know my American Express card does. You might want to look into that. Second, I know Fat32 can be modified to accomodate larger than 32 gb drives, but for the moment i'll assume you tried it first and it didn't work. Lastly, as a frequent buyer of technology, I feel I must say what you already know, DON'T BUY FROM BAD STORES. I would never buy from a company with a 7 day return window. I know you have the canadian shipping "restraint," but I'm sure there were other places this drive was available from. Buy.com for one never has given me a problem w/any return.

Finally, Ebay it, and good luck.

Jeff

[Doug Johnson]

You should be able to get around one of these limitations. It is true that XP will only create FAT32 partitions up to 32GB, but Windows 98/Me will create much, much larger FAT32 partitions that are readable by XP. So if that was the only limitation, hooking the drive up in a PC, booting to a Win98 startup disk and partitioning and formatting the drive there will allow you to run much larger partitions.

[ctmagnus]

That last point is true. I have a 60GB drive in one system that has always been FAT32. It's been reformatted a zillion times, and Windows 2000 has never complained.

[bmhome1]

XP's built in formatter limits FAT32 to 32GB. Use Partition Magic for larger partitioning.

Additionally, you can create your True Image archives in 4GB segments (also burns to DVD's).


Also, consider separating the OS from data for smaller archives. My ultra-loaded with applications XP OS stays under 10GB and images to under 6GB.

[bbarker]

I've owned three Maxtor external drives. All three supported NTFS. The second one replaced the first, failed after a year or so. The third replaced the second, which also failed. When the third one failed I replaced it with a Seagate, which seems to be of higher quality and to perform better.

Fortunately I had a CompUSA replacement plan for each of the Maxtors, so each replacement cost me just the price of the replacement drive's replacement plan. But I lost all confidence in Maxtor's external drives.

[David Horn]

You must have similar consumer protection laws to the UK. Here, I could return this as "not fit for purpose" and have the local trading standards officer back me up. (Sorry...) ;-)

[bbarker]

You must have similar consumer protection laws to the UK. Here, I could return this as "not fit for purpose" and have the local trading standards officer back me up. (Sorry...) ;-)
I don't know. A lot of technology products in the U.S. expressly disclaim any guarantee of suitability for any particular purpose. I don't know whether these hard drives carried that disclaimer.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Does it look like Parition Magic could be the answer Jason? I certainly used it to create a 100Gb FAT32 drive that I used for many years without a problem.

Can anyone recommend an external storage unit like the Maxtor that is network attachable, but that can also do RAID 1? I really like the idea of having one always-on external hard drive for my network, but am nervous about putting all my eggs in on basket (hard drive).

[Filip Norrgard]

Hmmm... reminds me of when I was looking for a swell backup drive for my new notebook and found a LaCie 500 GB FireWire Big Disk Extreme External Hard Drive (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001PFO5U/qid=1123784050/sr=8-3/ref=pd_bbs_sbs_3/102-3009880-1889725?v=glance&amp;s=electronics&amp;n=507846) (yeah, the corniest name I've ever heard so far -- bad, bad, bad marketing department!) and for a bargin. Well, I thought it was best to do some quick research and lo and behold, on Amazon (click above link), a bunch of buyers were complaining about incompatibility with Windows XP SP2. The problems sounded way to strange for me to even consider starting to experiment with the drive and hence, it is a no buy for me.

I'm still looking for a better backup hard drive, and it is anything else than a hard drive that will "only" work with Macs! :roll:

[bluemax]

Is there some licensing restriction with NTFS that no third party devices of this sort support it?

I think my best solution is going to be to set up a small linux server for all my online storage. Does anyone have experience with that sort of setup?

By the way, thanks for the warning.

Bill B

[bbarker]

I have been able to set up NTFS on all 3 Maxtor external drives I've had and on the Seagate 300GB (or is it 360GB?) external drive I now have.

[Philip Colmer]

One point that I think is being missed by some of the replies is that this particular device sits on the network - the drives are not directly attached to a PC. The device uses its own operating system which I would suspect is a derivation of Linux. The biggest hint is that the support pages say it will work with any computer that can work with Samba.

It is a shame that you have to dig so deep in order to get the real specifications and limitations of a device. Thankfully, as one poster pointed out, the UK consumer laws are more protective and I think a reasonably good case could be made of the "not fit for purpose" clause.

--Philip

[Jason Dunn]

Thanks for the replies guys - the suggestion of using another formatting tool did the trick! I used Acronis' Drive Director and formatted it in FAT32. w00t! The 4GB file size limit is still irritating, but not nearly as painful as not being able to use my extra drive. Thanks everyone! :D

[Jason Dunn]

Is there some licensing restriction with NTFS that no third party devices of this sort support it?

Yes, I believe that's the case - NTFS is owned by Microsoft, and I can't imagine anyone in the Linux community licensing it to create a module that could then be licensed by the hard drive OEMs. Kind of an ugly situation.

[Felix Torres]

Is there some licensing restriction with NTFS that no third party devices of this sort support it?

Yes, I believe that's the case - NTFS is owned by Microsoft, and I can't imagine anyone in the Linux community licensing it to create a module that could then be licensed by the hard drive OEMs. Kind of an ugly situation.

Actually, so is FAT32.
MS licenses both...
(Most flash card vendors license fat32 from MS)/

Maxtor could have chosen to license both.

I'm pretty sure there exist (unlicensed) Linux drivers that will mount NTFS; a few years ago an early version of those drivers was used to bypass NT disk security. NTFS has been modified but if Maxtor *wanted* its server to support NTFS they could have.
Extra work and extra cost, though.
And they would rather you buy more external drives from them, I think...
Happy ending though.

I'll have to remember that boot disk trick; I expect I'll need it one of these days...
(Hmm, I wonder if the XBOX360 will support external NTFS drive mounts; most network media players I've seen don't...)

[RenesisX]

There are NTFS drivers for Linux. Had to use them the other day when I took round one of my 250Gb Maxtor externals to a mate's house where he only has Linux.

Also, I'd recommend checking out the Buffalo Terastation (http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=97&amp;categoryid=19). They do them up to 1.6Tb, but the price sweet-spot is on the 1Tb model. Has built-in RAID5 option too to keep your data a bit safer. (plus you can also do the Maxtor trick of plugging in some other drives, although I don't know if it supports NTFS for the external drives - I suspect not as I think it uses EXT3 for the internal ones)

[Jonathon Watkins]

Also, I'd recommend checking out the Buffalo Terastation (http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=97&amp;categoryid=19). They do them up to 1.6Tb, but the price sweet-spot is on the 1Tb model.

Wow. Thanks for that RenesisX. That's almostprecisely what I am looking for: a RAID 1 gigabyte networked storage unit. However I already have plenty of large fast hard drives and the price of US$900 is too rich for me. Now if it was possible to buy this unit without the four 250Gb hard drives....... :D

The PC Mag (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1780693,00.asp) review says that this is the only network storage attached device that currently does RAID for under US$1000. I will definitely keep my eye on these devices.

[RenesisX]

Also, I'd recommend checking out the Buffalo Terastation (http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=97&amp;categoryid=19). They do them up to 1.6Tb, but the price sweet-spot is on the 1Tb model.

Wow. Thanks for that RenesisX. That's almostprecisely what I am looking for: a RAID 1 gigabyte networked storage unit. However I already have plenty of large fast hard drives and the price of US$900 is too rich for me. Now if it was possible to buy this unit without the four 250Gb hard drives....... :D


Tell me about it! Got 20 external Maxtor 250Gb units that could be happily reused!

[Jonathon Watkins]

Got 20 external Maxtor 250Gb units that could be happily reused!

8O 20? Good Lord RenesisX, how and why did you get that many? That's a plethora of disks! :lol:

[Fitch]

Eh, just pick up an isilon cluster (http://www.isilon.com/products/features.php)
168TB. You only need to buy a couple extra air conditioners.