Beam me, er.. Back me up Scotty!
Written: Dec 14 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Are you kidding? This much storage for this price! What's not to like?
Cons: Slow, and no off/on switch. Another converter cube to plug in somewhere.
The Bottom Line: An elegant and affordable solution for how to store years of pictures, thousands of songs and hundreds of other files.
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| dalesky's Full Review: |
Who doesn't want to be a member of the safe computing club? Being safe includes online safety, power safety (uninterruptable power supply) and backup safety. This device, the Maxtor OneTouch 4 is designed for backing up your PC or MAC. It is made by Seagate, but has the name Maxtor on it. Seagate purchased Maxtor.
Now, think back, way back, to say 5 years ago. Who among us thought we could purchase almost a terabyte of storage for under a grand? In fact, what the heck was a terabyte? Today, that amount is available for under $200, and this 3/4 terabyte drive cost me just $100!!
I was faithfully doing full backups on my PC, using a second internal hard drive that is devoted to just that task. I was finding that even my 250GB drive was filling up quickly with weekly backups. I wanted a solution that would extend the time before I needed to delete anything to make room for another backup. Also, when I change PCs I will have plenty of storage on this new Maxtor drive to move files to the new computer.
My particular model, purchased at Costco recently, is usable only via a USB 2.0, or USB 1.1 port. I see that some earlier reviews were for models that allowed the use of a firewire connection. This current model does not support fire wire. Pity, since it would be faster most likely. The USB cable that comes with it is pretty short by the way. It also needs to be plugged in to the external power supply converter that comes with it.
Here's what we are talking about in regards to this capacity- 750 gigs will let you store over 150,000 MP3 files, more than 150,000 picture files, hundreds of hours of video, etc. In other words, a boat load of storage in a small package. Both my picture collection and music collection span many years, plus, I have thousands of clip art files I have accumulated. I need to know that all of them are safely copied. The same goes for my documents and stored email files/folders.
It is not a portable drive, strictly speaking, since you need an extrernal power supply, and it is fairly large. It could certainly be lugged around, as it is 2.5 inches wide, 6.75 inches tall and just 6 inches wide. Sort of like a fairly thick book actually. It weighs a bit over 2 pounds, and is designed to sit upright on your desktop, with ventilation ports on the bottom, which I think should not be blocked, as they would be if placed on carpet.
It runs at 7200 RPM, a common or typical hard drive speed, and is guaranteed for 5 years. The actual copy or backup speed is up to 480Mb/sec Bus Transfer Rate with USB 2.0. This is not a fast speed by the way, and a full backup will initially take quite a while. Once the first one is done future incremental backups will take far less time. The reason is that the future backups will only copy files that are new or have changed since the full backup. Still, be prepared for that first one to take up an hour, maybe longer
There is a fairly bright white light bar on the bottom edge of the front, which is either on, or is blinking when the drive is actually backing up files. It also has a 16MB cache, meaning that it will put up to 16MB in memory while running an operation such as copying or backing up. Backing up is different than copying. A backup is controlled by Windows according to preset parameters you set. A copy is simply anything you choose to left-drag from one drive or folder to another drive or folder.
This drive can be used interchangeably as a backup device for all of your critical files, using Windows software, or using it's own backup software. You can choose to simply copy files also using Windows file manager, or another program's file save function. On my Windows Vista machine I did have trouble if the drive is left plugged in via the USB cable. My PC would hang up on the initial boot screen. If you use the Maxtor software you may simply push the front button on the drive to start the backup. I started leaving it unplugged when not in use, and than had no problems.
I did decide to allow Windows to backup to this drive, instead of using the Maxtor software that came with the drive. In fact, I uninstalled the Maxtor software suite, and now use it as a standalone USB device, just like a key drive or memory card. Windows simply backs up to it automatically on a weekly schedule now, just as my PC did before I had this drive. A number of reviews I found had comments about the unreliability of the software, so I decided to not take a chance. As mentioned earlier it has a 5 year limited warranty. Additionally, by buying it at Costco I automatically get their extended 2 year warranty on any electronics. If your PC is very new your copy of Windows Vista may be a 64bit version. The software that comes with the drive is only for 32bit versions. If you go to Seagate's web site you can find a knowledge base article that describes how to use the drive as a standalone device. They do a nice job of telling you about that.
The drive represents an extremely good value, has a long warranty, is made by a premier hard drive manufacturer, and has great capacity. I am pleased with it, and appreciate the peace of mind it allows me.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
dalesky
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 - Top 1000 |
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Location: Murrells Inlet South Carolina
Reviews written: 133
Trusted by: 11 members
About Me:
Love to cook, explore the Internet, read and watch movies on DVD. Ain't technology Grand?
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