Cons: Special double USB Cable, The 'Sync Services' software eats processor power.
The Bottom Line: A nice drive for backups if you find a good price. You need two powered USB ports for the special cable, and the software may slow your machine.
customeright's Full Review: Seagate USB 2.0 External - 160GB - 5400rpm - 480Mb...
Wow hard disk storage is getting cheap. For less than the price of an espresso maker, you can get enough disk space to back up your computer, your friends computer, your neighbors data, and probably still have plenty of room for more. That is of course until you buy that hot new 10.1 megapixel digital camera, or that digital video recorder (what's a home video of Uncle Fred bowling, without a Macarena soundtrack over it?) Oh, then add your gazillion MP3's, and those hundreds of email videos you get from your buddies. And maybe even add a few actual software programs (someone told me that computers do more than Internet, mp3's, and email). And wham! You're out of space.
Well, the Seagate/Maxtor 'One Touch 4 Mini' 160 GB USB 2.0 is one solution. And it's good at what it's good for: backing stuff up.
Here's what I mean:
Form
The Seagate/Maxtor One-Touch Mini USB 2.0 External 160 GB hard drive is exactly what it says. It's a small form factor, stand alone hard disk drive that connects via a USB cable. The drive itself is just slightly wider than an internal hard drive, but it's surrounded on the sides and bottom by a hard black rubber coating to protect it from transport. On the top, the drive is a brushed aluminum, with an indentation in the middle. It really has a bit of a portable look to it, although personally I wouldn't test the shock absorbing qualities of the protective rubber with my drive.
The dimensions are:
Length: 4 3/4"
Width: 3 1/8"
Depth: 9/16"
It weighs in at a scant 6.0 ounces, on the dot.
Features
The built-in features of this drive aren't many, but there are enough to do the job. With these devices, I find that simple is better. Simple the drive is.
Transfer Speed
While I probably wouldn't recommend this drive as a primary 'C' type device, even with a disk speed of 5400 RPM and USB 2.0 (it's probably still too slow to keep up with an operating system), but it's great as a secondary storage and backup device.
The drive itself is compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1 specifications, which means that it can transfer data very fast with USB 2.0 (up to 480 Mbps), or agonizingly slow with USB 1.1 (don't even try it with a 160 GB drive).
Security
Software that comes with the drive has a feature for claimed AES 254-bit data encryption. Without going into specifics about encryption algorithms (I work in information security), I'll just say that's a very strong form of encryption.
The Button
The drive also has a single multi-function button on the front that lights up when the drive is active. This button is for the 'one touch' aspect which I will describe below.
The Cord
The hard drive comes with a special USB cable that is actually the biggest negative about the drive. It's a USB 2.0 cable that has a normal USB mini-connector on one side for the drive, and two standard USB connectors on the other side. You need both of these for the drive to operate properly.
Function
Using the double-plug USB cable, you can plug the drive into your computer, and most Windows versions should recognize it as a USB mass storage device. If you install the software that comes with it, you'll get a range of options.
Software
The software that comes with the drive, called 'Maxtor Manager' is both good and bad.
For the good, primarily it's simple. It quickly recognizes the drive if you follow the installation instructions.
The bad is that some of the drive information is incorrect, and the software greatly slows down the machine.
Otherwise, the features that the software offers are: 'My Drives' (drive status), 'Backup', 'Sync', 'Safety', and 'Security'.
My Drives: This option gives you a current status of the drive such as size and space available. On this screen is also a support button, and a 'What's New' button. Neither actually work on my machine, so I'm not sure what they do.
Backup: As one of the primary uses for the drive is as a backup device, this function is important. On this screen, with the drive plugged in, you can edit backup settings by creating 'backup plans' for manual or scheduled backups. You can also add, modify, or delete these plans.
To set a plan there is a directory tree of your computer. You select the directories and files you wish to backup and make a name for the plan. You then choose the types of files you want to backup, such as pictures, videos, 'all', or custom file types. Finally, you select when you want the backup to run. You choose the day, or multiple days, and the time and finish the plan.
On the main backup page, you can choose whether to enable or disable the plan's timed backup for it to start automatically.
On the backup page you can also 'Restore' a backup to the computer from the drive. You can choose to restore an old archived backup, or just the most recent version.
Sync: The sync option is really just a way to do a fast backup first, then sync the data. The first option, for a 'Simple sync' just backs up your 'My Documents' folder. 'Custom sync' allows you to choose the directories or files to backup, like the backup plan.
With sync, you can set the sync rules for how you want to do the sync, and you can tie the sync option to the single button on the front of the drive (hence the 1-touch!).
Safety: For the safety options, you can create what is called a 'Safety Drill', where you allocate the maximum space you want on the drive, and this will take a mirror image of your hard drive to restore it exactly as it is, in the event of a system crash.
Security: The last option on the drive is security, which allows you to set a drive password, and encrypt all the contents of the drive. The drive password is simply that, and it prevents access to the drive without a password. You also can enter a password reminder if you forget. This however does not specifically encrypt the data.
The second option is to encrypt the data using Maxtor encryption. With this you enter a password, and create a folder on the drive to encrypt. The contents of the folder will be encrypted when files are written, or decrypted when removed from the drive through the encryption manager.
Negatives
There are two primary things I do not like about this Maxtor/Seagate USB One-Touch drive.
First, I don't like the need for the special double-end USB cable. I would assume that the drive needs a lot of power, and one cable can't provide enough for the drive to run. However this means that any standard USB mini-plug cable can't work with the drive, so you have to carry that one around, or buy a new one if you lose it (if you can buy one).
Second, while the software is nice when you're using the drive, it is NOT nice when you're not using the drive. Specifically, it GREATLY slows down your machine, even when it's not running. I did some investigation, and along with the manager software and icon, there is a background service installed called 'Syncservices' that runs constantly, regardless of if you have a drive plugged in, and even if you stop the manager and the tray icon. This service consumes at least 50% processor power on my single-core CPU, and at times holds the machine at 100% CPU used, even when it's doing nothing. You have to manually kill the process to free up processor time, and then you need to restart your computer to get the Maxtor manager to work properly again.
Conclusion
At around $100 (depending on where you look), the Seagate/Maxtor 1-touch mini, USB 2.0 160 GB external hard drive is a pretty good price. While there are others out there with more space for slightly more price, Maxtor is a good name brand. They also give a good 5 year warranty on the drive. At 160 GB, it's not the largest on the block, but it's very functional. The 1-button feature, if you configure it is nice, and the transfer speeds are what you'd expect from a USB 2.0 device. What isn't great is the special double-USB cable that you need for the drive to run, and the resource hogging services that the software installs bring my PC to a crawl until I kill the process (have to restart the computer for the software to work again). Otherwise, the drive is very portable, easy to use, and more than enough storage. Well, until I get that next 15 megapixel camera... and the cycle continues.
System Requirements
This hard drive as claimed on the box is compatible with Windows Vista and XP, and Mac OS X v10.4.7 to 10.4.9. Other requirements are a Pentium III or higher with 500 Mhz processing speed, 256 MB of RAM, and a CD-Rom drive for the software.
Weighing less than 6 ounces, the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini makes it easy to confidently carry your up-to-date portfolio in your pocket.More at TigerDirect.com
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