Maxtor One Touch Mini Review

Overall 5.00 of 5 (by 1 user)

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ntwrkguru
Norristown, PA

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The Maxtor One Touch Mini is perfect for mobile workers

a gadget geek, long-time computer user, a techie, a PC User

Pros

Just plain works, Great value, Reputable company, Very portable

Cons

Minor cosmetic flaws

JUL

2008

I was in the market for a back-up solution. I carry my laptop to and from work every day and needed a portable backup solution in case the laptop was damaged or stolen. After many hours of scouring online reviews, and price shopping, I settled on the Maxtor One Touch Mini after seeing it on sale at a major office supply store.

Unboxing-
The drive came in a blister pack which contained the hard drive (duh), a dual-tipped USB cable (more on that later), a software CD, a quick-start guide and registration paperwork. The blister pack was labeled as recycleable, so Maxtor gets a bonus "green" point.

Installation and setup-
The included USB cable is a Y-type cable with 3 ends; male USB labeled Data+Power, male USB labeled Power, and a male mini-USB that plugs into the drive. The reason for the Y-cable is a bit puzzling to me since both ends are the same length. I can't see why you would need a connector purely for power, but it's there just the same. Installation on my Windows XP Pro machine was a breeze and required no CD's or drivers; It was truly plug and play.

Usability-
The CD that comes with the drive is for the Maxtor application called "Safety Drill" which is a disk imaging tool. Using Safety Drill literally clones your PC as an image to the hard drive. This is especially handy if the PC were to be sent in for repair and the repair facility performed a factory "restore". Running Safety Drill recovery would restore your PC to the exact state it was in when the Safety Drill image was taken.

All other apps are included on the drive itself and on the first use, the drive prompts you to install the Maxtor Manager software to the local PC. This is the interface that allows you to backup, sync, restore and encrypt the data stored on the drive. It's very fast and intuitive. All of the apps that I tested worked as expected.

Observations-
This is really a great drive. It just does what it's supposed to without a lot of prep work and hassle, which is really what should be expected of a portable drive. I did however notice a few minor glitches that did annoy me.

1. The Maxtor Manager will copy the Maxtor icon to all of your local and external drives (including flash drives). I'm not sure why this is and I will be opening a case with Maxtor about it. This is a cosmetic annoyance and doesn't interfere with the operation of the drive or PC.

2. The Maxtor Manager mistakenly labels my external drive as C: when in fact it is F:. Again, this is a cosmetic annoyance, but one that should be fixed. [EDIT] I opened a case with Seagate (parent of Maxtor) and was routed directly to a fluent-English speaking representative. He was able to resolve my issue very quickly. It turns out that there is an incompatibility with a security program called TruCrypt.

Last edited on Aug 13, 2008