MMS II 2TB DRIVE FAILURE

[akis26]

I have a Maxtor Shared Storage II 2TB drive. It is actually 2 1TB drives RAID. It is no longer available on the networks, with the lights constantly blinking etc. I am trying to connect the two drives to my PC since I am convinced that it is actually an enclosure problem and not the drives. I do connect them and my BIOS recognizes them but it refuses to boot from my bootable Vista hard disk. Can anyone help?

[SWGeek]

> It is no longer available on the networks, with the lights constantly blinking etc
I would try a pin reset and upgrading to the latest released FW (and client) from Seagate before assuming it is HW. There were some NW discovery issues that got fixed in the 3.4.90 FW (MCA 1.0) that would help you out.

The upcoming "MCA 1.1" release will have rewritten watchdog/"blinking light" code that cleans things up quite a bit. One 'error' code was cleaned up so well, it will never appear <grin>.

[akis26]

the problem is I cant get my pc to see the drive. How I can upload the new software?

[SWGeek]

If you have a NW crossover cable you can connect to the MSS2 unit directly and it will AutoIP.

If you know the name of the unit (defaults are MSS-<last six digits of MACid>, or MCA-<last six hex digits of MACid> (So it will look like 'MCA-FF010F' or some such).

If you forgot the name of the unit, you can pin reset it to reset the name to the default (as above). The name/IP might not be what you expect it to be - Check on your router to find out the IP (or run the Maxtor Client SW to discover the unit).

[ossodiseppia]

If you have a NW crossover cable you can connect to the MSS2 unit directly and it will AutoIP.

If you know the name of the unit (defaults are MSS-<last six digits of MACid>, or MCA-<last six hex digits of MACid> (So it will look like 'MCA-FF010F' or some such).

If you forgot the name of the unit, you can pin reset it to reset the name to the default (as above). The name/IP might not be what you expect it to be - Check on your router to find out the IP (or run the Maxtor Client SW to discover the unit).

I've just had a a second drive fail. What is the deal with these things? It seems that everywhere I read, people seem to think they are junk. Mine is still under warranty and was strictly used for backup. So, I really haven't lost any data.

But, I really like these things and would love to learn about their known issues. Mine seems to just no boot up. I plug it in and the top light blinks green. Then, one yellow blink and it seems like it's trying to boot. It just keeps going through this cycle.

You mention a cross over cable. Is this an ethernet cable (can you tell I'm a novice)? What about this pin reset? What's that? Thanks in advance.

[mmh3]

I think with "pin-reset" is meant the following:

on the back side of your MMSII you will find a little hole about 1mm diameter.
her you have a to put a little thing in to press the switch which is hidden behind.
so you get a komplete reset to factory default-settings.

then use the same procedure as if you bought the MSSII new and connect it for the first time
eg. with the Maxtor-Utility..

but as i see ..once your MSSII worked before your experiments, so you should know how to do the "first connect"

if this does not work you can try the following, but you loose warranty !!!!! otherwise send it back to seagate

try to change the two HDD-Connectors in the MSSII against each other,
try to start.....WAIT 1hour...disconnect power, try again, WAIT again
dont care about the different lights ...use "first-connect" procedure.

If you are lucky the unit starts and you will find it again..fine

if not..change the SATA-Connectors again to them original position
again try to start...WAIT..dont care the lights..WAIT
and latestly now the Unit should be able to start again by forced using another of it´s four boot-partitions
after the heavy boot-mistakes you produce by this crazy "change" procedure
( in your case: there are 2 copies of the boot-partition on each drive!!)
mostly this recovers bad problems on a corrupted boot-partition

if all this does not help the only way known to me is what another member suggested me and its the way i think for your MSSII-500Gb of your other thread
****************************************
There's a tutorial about it.
Last thing you can do is adapt this tutorial to re-write the 3.4.90 firmware to the 4 partitions (sda1, sda2, sdb1, sdb2):
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Open_M ... hard_drive
***************************************
but i did not try this till now, although i have to do some time, because I have the same problem you described in your other thread about your MSSII (500Gb)
caused through some experiments with changing the RAID-Level from 0 to 1, and with optware packages

in general: be carefull with experiments if you are newbee. my experience and now opinion is that especially "uncomplete deinstallations" and/or a firmware up-/downgrade are responsible for those problems and the upper mentioned tutorial seems to bee the only way to solve this in a resonable time.... if you are newbee and no unix-crack on the MSS a lot of ways are "one way"
remember: the MSS is NOT a PC, where you can easily install and deinstall software. in deed it is a highly specialised linux-machine with all its "special needs"


the problem of your Vista-PC is a wrong entry for your boot HDD in the BIOS of your PC
check there, wether your Vista-systemdrive is still asssigned as "boot-HDD", because sometimes (or some BIOSes)
change the entrys, if you connect more HDD´s to your board

in the end.. with the "system" on the HDD´s of the MSSII ....YOU CANNOT boot a standard PC, because the Kernel is just for the
ARM-Processor in the MSSII and not for a Pentium/AMD etc..

YES a crossover cable is a network cable with "crossed" wires so you can connect a PC DIRECTLY and ONLY to the MSS.
But if you have gigabit-network on each side (PC and MSS) a normal one should work also.

if you want to learn more about this MSS machines..read, read, read this forum to me it helped a lot and made me think that this little NAS has some issues, eg. the blinking codes are just indicate that the raid is rebuilt and a simple "first connect" helps you out, because through pressing the back button more than 5 seconds just changed your MSS IP-Address and therefore you cannot find it anymore. often it is not a boot or hardware problem... this is what SWGeek meant about the watchdog-lights..

but the machines also got a lot of potential and advantages in a small size and prize!
eg. you can use even a "normal full size" Samba capable being a Windows-Domain-Member-Server!
but you have to read a lot first to know exactly what you do.

mmh

[DDEUXMAT]

I have a MSSII whith raid drive( 2 * 1 To), and one hard drive is "dead" . Please help me to replace it .
i bought a new hard drive 1 To seagate . Because unfortunately i break the warranty stick . So the seagate support refuse to make the exchange !
I read a lot of topic but my english and linux compétences are so poor !!
Thanks for reading my message.
I'm looking forward to your help

[jhellman]

Hi,

my MSS II 1TB failed to boot today - probably due to a short power distribution shortage. Now the system is only blinkin the top green color and between every 1 min 10 sec flashes orange color and boots again.

Could you describe what I can do to connect with a normal etherner cable on it.. have 1GB connection both on Mac and the MSS, however when I try to SSH to root@MSS-xxxxxx (name found on sticker behind the MSS box) there is no connections.. it seems that MSS is not responding since the bootup process in not done. Or am I making something wrong?

The pin reset does not work either... no effect at all. The top light just keeps on blinking, no reset/bootup happens.

Any advice?

[HiFiFan]

Hi there,

i also had no access to my MSS-II, however, i had the top green light blinking all the time.
when i gave power to the box, pressed the power-on button it started booting as normal,
i.e. after a few seconds of green blinking the HDD led turned on and flashed a bit,
as long as the harddisks were spinning up, then this led stayed off (more or less) and
the top led kept blinking, as if it never finished booting.

no network access at all at that time. the pinhole reset didnt work either, only way to turn
that thing off, is disconnecting the power chord.

Now after several trials, i opened the box, removed the disk package, and got to the board.
there's a little batterie which i removed for like 3 minutes, then put it back in.
put the disk package back in place and .... BINGO ... it booted nicely.

just , if nothing else works ... remove the battery.

there's a good picture of the board at http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Open_MSS-II
the battery is right in the front of that picture

Hope that helps some of you guys.