Most of the people do not know the importance of having an additional storage and back-up. You can never predict when you would run out of storage space and when your hard drive would fail. There are a wide range of products that are available in the market that answer your storage and backup needs. The products range from one or two gigabytes to a terabyte. For ultra-portability, you have the flash drives, 2.5″portable hard drives are available for you to store 40 to 320GB of data.

Maxtor has been a part of Seagate for a few years now. The digit ‘4’ in the heading refers to the product generation, this is often mistook as the number of interfaces available.

Design:

The Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini 320GB Hard disk also falls under the 2.5” hard disk category. It comes in a matte black-aluminium finish. Its visual appeals and built quality are good. Its built-in shock resistant design of the external hard disc ensures its durability.

Capacity:

As the name indicates, it comes with up to 320GB of memory. 320GB means that, you will be able to store 5330 hours of music, 102,400 digital photos, 320 hours of digital video, 80 two-hour DVD-quality films or 160 games… is that not staggering?

Interface:

The interfaces available include the USB2.0 and Firewire 1394a. Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini 320GB External Hard Drive does not have a power switch but it turns on, as soon as there is power in the USB or the Firewire connectivity.

Performance:

On the note of performance, Maxtor one touch does an excellent job. It has an average access time of 13ms which is way quicker than the Buffalo’s drives. The performance of the USB was also excellent. With a speed of 5400rpm, it delivers a very fast performance and the 8MB cache buffer helps you with instant accesses to your files.

The backup software:

The backup software cannot be downloaded just like that from the Maxtor website, you will have to submit a support request and give the serial number. A better idea would be, you could burn a software CD, once you do this, you can install and restore it, whenever you need to without undergoing any tedious formalities.

The useful set of software:

Maxtor OneTouch™ 4 Mini USB 2.0 320GB Portable hard drive comes with a very useful set of software package. The Maxtor manager would allow you to back-up individual files and folders. The individual file types can be defined and the backup can be scheduled to be run at a specific date and time. A program known as sync is also available that synchronises the folders and files between the PC and your Maxtor onetouch hard drive.

Secure:

All the files and folders that are dragged in to the Encryption tool is password protected . Password protection can also be given to the hard drive, but this kind of security is not as good as that of the full disc encryption technique. The software suite element allows you to create entire system images, which can be used in case of disaster recovery, with the help of the Linux boot CD.

The safety drill software package is a complete backup storage solution which creates an entire worst case recovery back-ups, which is done by having a backup reminder that can allocate a minimal amount of disk space on the Onetouch 4 plus drive.

Package and warranty:

The Maxtor package comes with the Maxtor OneTouch™ 4 Mini 320gb Hard disk, power supply, USB cable, Firewire cable and an instruction booklet. The good news with the warranty is that, Seagate provides Maxtor OneTouch™ 4 Mini USB2.0 Hard disk with five years of solid warranty.

Verdict:

This Maxtor Portable Hard Drive is an ideal device as an extra large capacity storage device for your computer that can be integrated in a quick way in to your computer. With easy installation, ease of use and great performance, the 320gb Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini Hard disk is certainly recommended.

Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini 320gb – Technical Specifications, Features

Manufacturer Maxtor
Model Name Maxtor OneTouch ™ 4 Mini
Model number STM903203OTC3E1-RK
Dimensions 4.9″ x 0.59″ x 3.22″
Form factor 2.5″
Capacity 320GB
Colour Black
Weight 167 g
Spindle speed 5,400
Cache buffer 8-MB
Compatibility Mac and PC
Interface USB 2.0 and 1.1 compliant
Bus transfer rate 480 MB/sec
Power source USB bus
Warranty Five years

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