Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Hidden Risk Alert
There is nothing wrong with your drive, however, you may not be aware that you are currently at double the risk of failure.
Inside this particular box are two drives. By default, they are configured for RAID 0 configuration. That means that if any one of those drives dies, you will lose all data. Moreover, it will be a RAID 0 recovery case with an astronomical price tag.
It is a well-known fact that RAID0 storage devices should not be used to store data permanently. They are only to be used as temporary storage location that is constantly backed up. Unless you are using it for video or graphics work as temporary storage, your data is at double the risk of a single drive.
If you purchased this device with the intent of taking advantage of its “mirror” capability, you need to reconfigure it for RAID1. Please note that both drives will be wiped out.
Please, immediately backup the data on this drive and reconfigure it for RAID 1.
Hi I have a question about the maxtor onetouch iii Turbo (external usb/1394 dual drive raid). I have a few here that failed. My main question is can the drives be replaced with anything other than the stock drives (500gb seagate sata), i.e. can the drives be replaced with matched 750 or 1tb sata drives, or is there some special firmware in the onetouch iii turbo. I tried unplugging the bad drive (spinup, with some head clicking sound) and the enclosure does not seem to initalize with the good drive, so I am assuming this enclosure cannot be run/started with a single drive. You sound like you have some experience with these units. Also have you found any way to make these units somewhat reliable. They seem to have a much higher failure rate than other external drives (even dual disk units). I use the same series drives in 15bay rack mounted raid systems without these king of failure rates.
thanks for any help
Brian
bscarpati@yahoo.com
Another thing is Maxtor/Seagate packed this drive with a substandard power supply (the external brick)
The power supply that comes with this drive is 12V 3A and puts out 36 watts.
My OneTouch drive appeared to have failed this weekend. Upon further investigation it was the external power brick that was not providing the correct output to power the drive. This is on a unit less than a year old.
I went to a local electronics store and purchased a brand new, higher spec power supply that is 12V 4.17A and outputs 50 watts.
Basically that allows some “headroom” in case the Onetouch Turbo enclosure and drives needs more power.
I believe the majority of failures of these units can be attributed to the marginal power brick Seagate/Maxtor packaged with the drive.
The new power brick solved all the problems I had with the drive (power downs, blinking front panel lights, read/write errors)
Brian,
” tried unplugging the bad drive (spinup, with some head clicking sound) and the enclosure does not seem to initalize with the good drive, so I am assuming this enclosure cannot be run/started with a single drive. ”
I have the Turbo 1TB. One of the drives went dead last month. My PC could not connect to the unit. I opened up the unit, identified the bad drive, unplugged it from the controller, power the unit on with just one drive in it, and was able to connect to it from my PC. I could access all the files on the good drive. So, make sure that it’s the bad drive that you’re removing from the unit.
Have you tried plugging in a pair of new drives into the unit? I think a lot of people are curious about that.
I left out one important thing in my last reply: I have configured the unit with RAID 1.