Timos's Journal: Maxtor Rant

About 2 months ago I got a brand new Maxtor OneTouch Raid external backup "solution". The external case contains 2 x 500 GB hard disks and can be set up as either RAID0 - 1 Terrabyte or as RAID1 0.5 Terrabyte. Since I got it as a backup and security was my main concern - I set it up as RAID1. This (in theory) means that every piece of data is contained on both drives - so if one fails there is a backup on the other drive.

After about a month of usage I had gathered about 400 GB worth of data and then the trouble started. The drive stared to sound funny and when I went to use the maxtor backup tool it gave an error message. A little concerned I started to test if I could read some of the files stored on the drive. This resulted in some "file unreadable" errors from windows. Pretty upset with the prospect of this so called complete solution failing so soon after me starting to use it I gave Maxtor a call. I told them of my trouble and they told me that they would be happy to replace the drive. However, I did not pay $800 for a drive - I paid for a reliable backup solution. Turned out that they had no idea why I could not get files off the drive or why seemingly both drives failed. It is pretty upsetting to loose 400 GB worth of data, having to pay to send the faulty drive to Maxtor and then get a new drive that now I am not sure I can even trust.

Faulty or deliberate?

[HomelessInLaJolla]

How can one know if the drive itself was faulty or if a little known zero day exploit was used to plant a little known worm which hid in the filesystem architecture and eventually resulted in 400 GB of lost data?