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Getting the Lowdown on Seagate and Maxtor Firmware Fixes

Mark Edward Soper — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:24:40 -0600

As our own Paul Lilly's been telling us recently, many Seagate hard disks have been afflicted by firmware woes. Unfortunately, Seagate's first attempt to fix the problem wound up turning working drives into high-tech bricks.

As it turns out, both Seagate and Maxtor-brand SATA drives can be affected by firmware problems. So, how can you find out exactly which models may be on the naughty list and when Seagate has a firmware fix that's ready for prime time? Here's how.

To determine if you have a drive that's affected, you need to know the drive's model number, firmware revision, and serial number. Seagate offers the free Drive Detect utility, which displays this information.

You can also determine the drive's model number by opening Device Manager in Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7, and expanding the Disk Drives category. To view the firmware revision, open the Details tab (if present) and select Hardware IDs from the pull-down menu. The firmware revision is listed thus (Windows 7 Beta shown, Windows XP and Vista are similar):

The serial number is listed on the drive's faceplace, or you can find it on the original box.

Once you know this information, open Seagate KB article 207931 and look up your drive. The following families of drives are affected:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATA(160GB, 320GB, 500GB, 640GB, 750GB, 1TB, 1.5TB capacities)
Seagate Barracuda ES.2 SATA (250GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB)
Maxtor DiamondMax 22 SATA (160GB, 320GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB capacities)

See the KB article for specific model numbers.

To find out which firmware revisions need to be updated, and to be notified when a working update is available, click the link for your drive family. When recommended firmware is available, the download link will be posted. As an alternative to revisiting the drive family's page until the firmware update is posted, click the Subscribe icon and enter your email address. Seagate will send you an email when the page is updated.

In the meantime, follow the links on Paul Lilly's report on firmware problems to see how other users are dealing with the problem - and, back up your drives!

Shiny! Gaze Upon Our Maxtor Central Axis NAS Unboxing Photos

Norman Chan — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:15:58 -0500

We just received a retail sample of Maxtor's recently announced Central Axis Network storage server sent to the office, and wanted to share with you some photos of the packaging and physical unit. The monolithic storage device sports a familiar-looking enclosure design with single USB (as opposed to two, as listed on the official website), Ethernet, and AC power connectors on the back. Replacing a "one-touch" backup button on the front are three lights to indicate power, hard disk activity, and drive status. We also found a reset button on the base of the unit. The terabyte drive spins at 7200rpm, sports 32Mb of buffer cache, and weighs in at just over a pound and a half.

The Central Axis goes on sale later this month for $290, and keep an eye out for our full review later.

Not Just Another Big Network Drive: Maxtor Prepares to Put 1TB of Media-Savvy Storage on Your Home Network

Mark Edward Soper — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:35:09 -0500

Entering a Crowded Marketplace...

SlashGear reports that Seagate has announced a new 1TB network attached drive, the Maxtor Central Axis network drive. Network attached drives aren't exactly new, of course.

Maxtor and Seagate already offer a number of network drives with similar capacities. Other vendors offering 1TB-class network storage include:

Western Digital (read our review of the My Book World Edition II dual-drive edition here)
Iomega
Buffalo Technology
Netgear
LaCie

The market is crowded, all right. So, what makes Maxtor's new network box so special?

...With More-than-PC Features

So, what makes this new product special? Features that recognize that today's home networks are not just a collection of PCs running Windows, but also include console games, media devices, and systems running MacOS. Central Axis is designed to meet the following needs:

Backup; includes automatic backup software for both Windows and MacOS clients
Remote access; supports secure remote access via web browser
Streaming media support; enables game consoles that support the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standard, such as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, to display videos, pictures, and play music stored on the Central Axis; requires a UPnP AV 1.0 certified Digital Media Adapter for streaming media
Includes UPnP (universal Plug and Play) for easy configuration
Two additional USB ports (support print server and additional storage)
Password protected storage

Specifications

Hard disk

1TB, 7200RPM, 32MB cache

Network Connectivity

Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000)

Supports Web Interface for management

Firefox 2.x or later; IE 6.x or later

Operating systems

Windows XP, Vista - MacOS 10.4.11 or later

Warranty

5 years

The Target Is...

The Central Axis has more than just other network drives in its sights. With its support for automatic backup, it's a potential rival to Microsoft's Home Server, and with support for game consoles and MacOS as well as Windows clients, it's intending to sweep the 'best in show' for network drives.

Cha-ching!

The Central Axis will have a retail price at July introduction of $329.95, which is more than many of its competitors.

Big Maxtor Disks Making Big Security Headaches [Updated]

Mark 'Marcus Soperus' Soper — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 16:02:01 -0600

First, the Bad News

Seagate, which owns Maxtor, reported today that Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 hard disks produced since August 2007 may be infected with Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah. This virus, which Symantec calls W32.Drom, and McAfee calls PWS-LegMir (see the notification page for a complete list of aliases), searches for online game passwords and sends them to a ~~China-based~~ server, and knocks your existing antivirus program out of action.

[Update: Paul Ferguson, a researcher for Trend Micro, has determined that the servers are actually located in Dallas, TX and Korea, according to Robert McMillan of IDG News Service]

Most of the affected games are Chinese, but one big exception is World of Warcraft. Ouch!

Kapersky Helps Seagate (and You) Fight Back

Seagate says that most major antivirus vendors have issued updates to stop the virus. However, if you've been lazy about updating your antivirus, or just plain don't have an antivirus program, Seagate and Kapersky Labs, which first alerted Seagate, have teamed up to offer you a 60-day trial of Kapersky's Anti-Virus 7.0, which you can download from the product notification page. Here's a direct link to the US English version.

But Wait! There's More (Bad News, That Is)

Hey, it could be worse - and maybe it is. According to the Taipei Times, some Maxtor Basics 500GB hard disks sold in Taiwan contain two Trojan Horse viruses that send "any information saved on the computer" to Chinese websites www.nice8.org and www.we168.org.

Authorities in Taiwan believe this incident may be an attempt by the mainland Chinese government to perform cyberespionage. About 1,800 drives were affected, but only 300 were sold before the products were pulled from store shelves. In a follow-up, the Taipei Times reported that Seagate has determined that the infections originated with a China-based subcontractor.

Wondering if this is an isolated case? Wondering what you should do to protect yourself? Read on...

Time to Think Twice About Maxtor Drives?

Unfortunately, this isn't the first time that Maxtor portable drives have been fingered in an information-stealing probe. Back in September, Kapersky Labs reported finding the same Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah virus on Maxtor Portable Storage 3200 drives sold in the Netherlands. At the time, Seagate blew off the report, with a spokesperson reportedly saying "...I have never heard of a virus that lives in the master boot record." The spokesperson had evidently never heard of the notorious Brain or Michaelangelo boot-sector viruses. With the latest infection, though, Seagate has become a believer in boot-sector viruses.

So, is it time to think twice about Maxtor external hard disks? Maybe it is, and maybe it's time to think twice about any storage coming from mainland China. Keep in mind that with today's global economy, even a hard disk that has a different "assembled in" country on the packaging might have a disk assembly hailing from China.

Protecting Yourself (and Your Data)

So, how can you protect yourself from getting zapped by a virus coming from a new hard disk?

Scan any brand-new external hard disk for viruses and malware as soon as you connect it to your system.
If you have a system you're not using for anything, consider making it a virus testing system.
Keep your antivirus and anti-malware software up to date.
Reformat external hard disks before using them to recreate the master boot record.
To prevent a portable hard disk from starting automatically in Windows XP, download and install TweakUI from the Windows XP PowerToys website. Use the AutoPlay section of TweakUI to disable AutoPlay.
To disable AutoPlay in Windows Vista, open the Play CDs or Other Media Automatically link in Control Panel's Hardware and Sound category and uncheck the Use AutoPlay checkbox. The How-To Geek's website also has tips for controlling AutoPlay for specific media types and how to disable AutoPlay with Group Policy or registry tweaks.

With all of the new-found emphasis on safeguarding consumers from dangerous Chinese products, let's hope drive and storage vendors are jumping on the bandwagon.

Maxtor One Touch III 100GB

Josh Norem — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 17:40:37 -0500

Maxtor has downsized its awesome One Touch Turbo desktop backup drive into this 100GB Mini model. It looks exactly the same as the Turbo, and it comes with the same excellent software.

The Mini uses a 5,400rpm drive with an 8MB buffer. Even though it has a lower areal density (the number of bits packed onto the drive’s platters—higher is better) than the Seagate drive, the Maxtor drive outperformed Seagate by a small margin in both our 5GB read and 5GB write tests.

The star of the show is the software, which is easily the most fully featured package we’ve ever seen for a drive this size. It lets you password-protect the drive, set folders to automatically sync, restore deleted files, and lots more.

Sure, the Mini delivers the least capacity in this roundup, but 100GB is enough for us. If you’re shopping solely for storage space, by all means get the Seagate; but if you want a drive for backup and syncing, it doesn’t’ get any better than this.

Month Reviewed: October 2006

+ PLATTER: Decent capacity, kick-ass software, and a sleek design.

- FATTER: Only 100GB.

VERDICT: 9
kickass=yes

URL: www.maxtor.com

Maxtor One Touch III Turbo

Josh Norem — Tue, 23 May 2006 14:24:49 -0500

Backup drives are usually pretty bland and uninteresting, consisting of just a drive mounted inside a plastic shell. Not this time! Maxtor has managed to tickle our Geek-spot by wedging two 500GB drives inside a sexy rubber lunchbox, and adding a dash of RAID for spice. It all amounts to one hell of a drive, and it’s the new end-all, be-all backup drive as far as we’re concerned.

The Turbo’s small footprint belies its behemoth capacity, which totals 930GB formatted, compliments of two Maxtor DiamondMax 11 500GB drives. While having two drives instead of one isn’t that exciting on its own, we were stoked to learn that you can run the drives in either RAID 0 (striped) for maximum capacity, or RAID 1 (mirrored) for redundancy. You set up the array using the included software, which we found extremely easy to use. Note that if you run RAID 1, there’s no way to swap out a drive in the event of a disk failure. Maxtor will send you a new unit, to which you would copy your data, and then you’d return the defective unit to Maxtor.

The Turbo’s configuration utility sports some options we love—such as the ability to password-protect access to the drive in case of theft, the option to reduce seek times for quieter operation (although you can’t adjust the integrated fan’s speed), and the ability to easily tell the drives to spin down after a certain period of time.

The included backup software is Dantz Retrospect, but Maxtor has added a custom front-end that makes the software simple to use. You can make images of your drives, duplicate key files, or just keep certain folders synced with your backup drive at all times.
We’re impressed. Way impressed. If Maxtor added a media reader, a USB port, and silenced the fan, this drive would have been worthy of a Kick Ass award.

Month Reviewed: May 2006

Verdict: 9