Mass Video Storage Drive: Maxtor OneTouch External Hard Drive (page 2)

Mac, USB 1.1 and USB 2.0

We hot-swapped the drive back to a USB 1.1 port and were pleased to see a warning pop up, cautioning that this type of USB connection was not fast enough for the drive, even though the drive still worked. Again, we hot-swapped the drive back to a USB 2.0 port and tried to capture again. This time, we experienced lots of dropped frames. A reboot immediately solved this problem. Our haphazard, hot and frequent swaps were certainly to blame for the dropped frames and in more than 20 hours of hard use, the drive did not drop any other frames at all.

We also tested the drive on a Mac G4 through the FireWire port. No additional software drivers were required. Our capture tests were just as reliable on the Mac as they were on our Wintel box. G4 Macs do not have USB 2.0 ports, although new PowerBook G4s do (in addition to two FireWire ports), as do the G5s.

Fast Enough

One of the main marketing pushes for this drive is the OneTouch button, which is intended to automatically run the included backup software (but could be programmed to run Solitaire or any other program you want). We cursorily tested this feature and it worked as advertised.

External drives from Maxtor cost about 25% more than the equivalent internal version, which is about what you'd pay for an external enclosure kit to convert an internal drive. External drives tend to have slower peak burst transfer rates, which means that the drives are slower overall. For video capture, however, burst transfer is meaningless, and the OneTouch drive is more than capable of handling the task, by a factor of 20. Besides the ease with which you can transfer huge amounts of data between computers, bringing this 7,200 rpm heat-generator outside of the computer case is a good idea. Convenient, portable, silent and attractive; this is a no-hassle drive with massive capacity.

TECH SPECS

Platform: PC or Mac
Operating System: Win 98SE/2000/Me/XP; Mac OS 9.1 or later
Processor: PII or Mac G3
RAM: 32MB
Interface: USB 2.0 (and 1.1) and FireWire
Drive Specs
Cache Buffer: 8MB
Capacity: 250GB
Speed: 7,200 rpm

STRENGTHS

• Capacity/price
• Flexible connectivity
• Instant installation

WEAKNESSES

• Default FAT32 format

SUMMARY

A no-hassle drive with massive capacity.

$350
Maxtor Corporation
500 McCarthy Blvd.
Milpitas, CA 95035
(408) 894-5000
www.maxtor.com