Maxtor OneTouch II 200GB External Hard Drive

Reviews: Storage

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Nicholas Hart
Kurtis
Maxtor
Jun. 24, 2005

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Taking a Closer Look

The Maxtor OneTouch II 200GB external hard drive comes with a silver anodized aluminum casing with a bit of grey plastic and aluminum mesh on the front. The aluminum not only looks nice but promises to effectively wick away any heat that the drive may produce. I pulled the Maxtor OneTouch II drive out of its box and was surprised by how heavy it was. Sure, the aluminum case is thick, but I don't think it is that thick. Perhaps they lined the inside with lead to help prevent EMI! The extra heft could be a good thing; it definitely provides a solid feel to the drive. I even tried squeezing it a bit to see if I could hear any squeaks but the thing is solid like a rock.

The case is designed so that you can stack multiple units on top of one another. They are able to stack because of small indentations which allow a little bit of interlocking between units. There is also a plastic stand to keep the drive upright. The case has a small amount of ribbing that allows for a bit of grip and the Maxtor logo is inset in case you need a reminder as to who made it.

Metal mesh seems to be "in' these days and the Maxtor OneTouch II drive is not to be left out. There is a strip of it down the face of the drive and it also encloses the button that puts the "touch' in OneTouch II. As the name implies, this button allows you to kick off a backup with just one touch. The button also has a HDD Status LED built into it so you can keep tabs on the drive's activity at a glance. The rest of the casing pieces are grey plastic but they fit well and don't detract from the appearance of the drive.

On the backside of the drive we can see the USB and Firewire interface connectors, the power switch and the power port. There are some cutouts that seem to accommodate a fan, but there isn't actually one there. The hole in the middle of the vent looks like it might accommodate a Kensington type lock to keep the drive from walking out the door without you.

A CD is included with drivers and the Dantz Retrospect Express backup utility. You also get a Firewire and USB cable so that you can hook the drive up and of course the AC/DC brick to provide power. There is also a quick start guide and some rubber feet if you decide to lay the drive on its side.

Software

Maxtor included Dantz Retrospect Express GD to handle backup tasks for the OneTouch II drive. This is the same Dantz you may also know as EMC Dantz, as in EMC the storage hardware and software giant which gives this piece of software a bit of a pedigree. This is just the home version of course, but my expectations are high.

After installing the software you are given two choices for type of backup. You can just have it duplicate the contents of your drive onto the Maxtor external, or you can have it create system restore points similar to the Windows XP System Restore feature. The difference being that the system restore option will perform differential backups after the initial backup and then give you the option to restore your system to a certain date. However, with the system restore function, you can't browse the drive and copy a single file out, you can only choose from one of the restore points. The duplicate system gives you the granularity to pick individual files as it simply copies to the hard drive giving you a mirror of your internal drive. But the duplicate option doesn't give you the flexibility to restore the system, each new backup run will copy any updated files but not keep a historical copy. Each option has its advantages and disadvantages but I chose the restore point option for a change of pace.

I left the setup options at default which is to backup the entire drive and then kicked off the backup operation. No window popped up giving me status messages, only an animated icon in the taskbar told me that something was happening. You can click on the icon to get more detailed information or you can mouseover and get a popup information message. It was kind of nice to have it running in the background and not prompting me or taking space on the screen.

Now, if you read my Seagate External drive review, you know that I didn't appreciate the BounceBack process as it took a long time and brought up multiple prompts. Well the Retrospect Express HD software takes just as long to prepare the backup, maybe even a bit longer, but it doesn't bug you about it. It just goes about its business down there in the taskbar without bothering me. In fact, the Retrospect software takes quite a bit longer than BounceBack as it runs a verify routine after copy, almost doubling the total operation time. Again though, you may not even know its happening since no dialogs are presented. So Retrospect isn't speedy by any means, but it's the Ronco Rotisserie of backup software, you just set it and forget it.

Another bit o' software that comes with the Maxtor OneTouch II external drive is their "DriveLock' utility. This feature allows you to set a password for accessing any files on the drive. The way it works is, after creating a password and enabling the feature, any time the drive is plugged in it will prompt you to enter the password before you can see the drive's contents. If you close the dialog without entering the password, then it will appear in an "other' section in "My Computer' and you cannot open it. In fact, the drive doesn't even show up in Disk Manager so a would-be data thief can't even format the drive out of spite.

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Taking a Closer Look / Software
Page 3: Testing
Page 4: Conclusion

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