Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Maxtor Onetouch III Turbo Edition


For the last couple of weeks, I have been playing with the Maxtor 1Terrabyte Onetouch. Why Onetouch? It has a button in front of the drive. When switched on and plugged into your machine, all you have to do is push the buton and the entire PC is backed up. The WHOLE THING!!!

You can set the included software to backup at specific times if you wish and you can do it manually, of course. The button is a little gimicy, but that's why I like it.

The drive itself is not small but it is still portable enough to move around to save in a safe place or move large files around. The drive comes with 1 USB port, 1 Firewire 400 port and 2 Firewire 800 ports. It supports both Macs and PC's and is mainly designed for people using video or audio in thier everyday work, like editors or photographers.

To really test the drive, I backed up my PC and all the music from a small community radio station here in Johannesburg. No problem. The music played right off the drive and while I was doing that, I was moving files around to test the read and write speed. No problems at all.

The included software is easy to install and run and you don't really have to think about it once it is installed. Backups can be scheduled or when something on your drive changes. Backup happens without slowing your PC down at all.

I mentioned the portablility but one design flaw is the drive stands end-on. I am sure that you can out it down as you expect, but it's not really made to do it. I love the new Maxtor Onetouch III Turbo Edition....

SPECS:
Capacity 1000GB
Cache Buffer 16MB
Spin Rate 7200RPM
IEEE 1394b (up to 800 Mbits/sec)
-plus-
IEEE 1394a
and SPB-2 Compliant (100 to 400 Mbits/sec)
-plus-
USB 1.1 Compatible (12 to 480 Mbits/sec)

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