Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition 1TB Review
Features of the Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition 1TBWhat's in the Box Inside the package with the Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition 1TB you get the following items:
External Drive You're not getting one large drive with the Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition 1TB, what you are actually getting are two Maxtor 500 GB drives set up in a default RAID 0 for spanning data across both drives for a total storage capacity of 1TB. You can optionally have the data mirrored in a RAID 1 configuration between the two internal drives for data redundancy and a 500 GB storage capacity.
The drive comes out of the box formatted for Mac users, but Windows users shouldn't fret. The drive is very easy to reformat via Windows Disk Manager. I had the drive reformatted in all of 10 minutes. Visually the Maxtor drive is very Macish with the silver and gray color scheme. To help protect the drive, the sides are covered in rubberized panels.
Maxtor gives you all of the external connectivity options you could want for an external hard drive. You get USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 on the back panel of the drive. There is also an on/off switch you can use rather than just unplugging the drive. The external power adapter is the standard type we are all used to seeing on external drives and gadgets. You can also see in the image above that Maxtor includes a small fan to keep the drives cool. Backup Software Maxtor bundles EMC Retrospect Express HD software with the Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition 1TB to automatically back up and restore your data and Maxtor also includes disk management software as well. Inside the Maxtor management application you can change your backup settings, change what application launches when the one touch button is pressed, add security settings where a password is required to access the data on the drive, change RAID settings, initiate restores from saved restore points on the drive.
You can also use the drive like you do Windows System Restore by initiating a restore point via the Maxtor software before making changes to your system. You can also use the software to set up automated backups of any and all disks on your computer. My system has two drives in addition to the Maxtor external and I was able to easily use the automated software to backup both my computer drives. Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition Installation & Use There was really no installation to speak of for the Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition, you simply unbox it, plug in the power, choose your connection option and plug the drive into your computer. If you are on a Mac you will be ready to use the drive as soon as it is plugged in. If you are on Windows, you will need to reformat the drive to NTFS or FAT32.
Windows users, don't let the fact that the drive doesn't come formatted for Windows dissuade you from purchasing this drive. It is very easy to reformat the drive to NTFS for Windows XP via the Windows Disk Manager found by right clicking the "My Computer" icon and choosing "Manage". Once inside the management console, click Disk Management and find the Maxtor drive. Once the Maxtor drive is selected right click it and choose format. Follow the remainder of the steps and you will be ready to use the disk in a few minutes. Configuring the automated restore point software was very easy to do. You choose between comprehensive or duplicate to start with. I choose comprehensive, then you choose the disks, files or folders you wish to backup and select the days of the week you wish to execute the backup process and the time you would like it to be automatically executed. Benchmarking the Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition 1TB To test the performance of the Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition I used both real world testing and synthetic benchmarks. For the synthetic tests I used HD Tach and SiSoftware Sandra 2007. To test the real world performance of the drive I copied a large 1.03GB file from my internal drives to the Maxtor, then copied the same file from the Maxtor back to my system disk and finally deleted the file from the Maxtor and timed the entire process with a stopwatch. HD Tach HD Tach gave the following results:
Sandra 2007 For testing with Sandra 2007 I used the removable storage benchmark test. The test results were as follows: Benchmark Results Performance Test Status 512B Files Test 32kB Files Test 256kB Files Test 2MB Files Test 64MB Files Test Endurance Test Status Endurance Benchmark Breakdown
Real World Tests For the real world testing I copied the 1.03GB folder to and from the drive and came up with the following times:
I also timed the backup software as it backed 11.2GB from my internal Raptor 74GB drive. It took 9:01 to backup the 11.2GB and begin data verification. The backup and data verification took 18:15 start to finish. Verdict If you are in need of additional storage space for your data and pictures, but don't have room for additional internal drives or simply don't want to open your system up, the Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition is an excellent option. The drive is fast, nearly as fast as internal drives in real world usage. Even with all the storage space the Maxtor has, it is still small enough to be portable and the password feature will keep your data safe. This much storage capacity doesn't come cheap, the Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition 1TB has an MSRP of $749.95. Overall, the 1TB OneTouch Turbo is a fantastic product and highly recommended.
Test System Specifications:
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