Product Description

Seagate's 3.5" External Hard Drives provide a safe haven for your entire working environment against system crashes & virus attacks. Maxtor SafetyDrill automatically creates a snapshot of the entire contents of your harddrive which can be readily booted for a complete recovery. With this simple full-featured backup solution, Maxtors software makes automated backup scheduling, specific file restoration, sync, security, drive & power management a snap. Safe guarding against unauthorized use, Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus comes with both data encryption and Maxtor DrivePass. It is easy to install just plug the external drive into an available USB orFireWire port on your PC or Mac, run the preloaded software, and you are good to go. Key Features --- Capacity - 1 TB --- Form Factor -- 3.5" External --- Interface -- USB 2.0 / FireWire 400(1394a) --- AES 256-bit software encryption 480 Mb/sec --- Spindle speed -- 7200 RPM --- Buffer Size -- 16MB --- Dimension -- 2.5" x 6.0" x 6.75" / 63.5 x 152.4 x 171.45 mm --- Weight -- 2.5lbs or 1110 grams Inside the Box: --- External hard drive with pre-loaded installation software --- Quick start guide, Power adapter --- USB 2.0 cable, FireWire 400/1394a cable --- Maxtor SafetyDrill¿ Recovery CD* Requirement: - PC: --- Pentium III, 500Mhz equivalent processor or higher --- Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, and Business --- Microsoft Windows XP Home, Professional, and Media Center Edition --- 256MB RAM or more as required by operating system --- Internet connection for software updates --- CD ROM Drive for Maxtor SafetyDrill¿ full PC recovery* - Mac: --- Mac OS X 10.4.7-10.4.9 --- 256MB RAM or more as required by operating system --- Internet connection for software updates --- (Note: * This software feature is only available on Windows systems.) Warranty -- 1 year

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23808 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Seagate
• Model: STM310004OTA3E5-RK
• Dimensions: 2.50" h x 6.50" w x 6.75" l, 4.40 pounds
• Memory: 16MB
• Hard Disk: 1000GB

Features

• 1 TB external hard drive connects to your computer via USB cable or FireWire 400
• Simple Maxtor user interface for drive management, security, and backup scheduling
• Two levels of security against unauthorized use - Maxtor DrivePass¿ and data encryption
• Sync data between 2 or more computers on the same operating system
• Drive and power management utilities; 5-year limited warranty

Customer Reviews

Satisfied Apple Macintosh User!
Several things I like about this drive: It is one solid terabyte, not several smaller drives inside of a single enclosure like many others (2 x 500GB). The 7200 RPM speed of the drive means it is fast. I can play music off of it through iTunes while it backs up my computer with no change in performance. Maxtor is now owned by Seagate which is known for manufacturing better hard drives than those made by Maxtor in its earlier days. The drive is basically silent and has a nice modern appearance (I have seen some pictures of an all black version that looks pretty tough). The price is very reasonable compared to other 1TB drives. Overall I am very happy with my purchase and I am considering getting a second one so I can have one dedicated to backup and the other for storage of music and photos.

I purchased this hard drive when upgrading to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to use with "Time Machine." Time Machine is a computer backup service built into the new Apple Macintosh operating system, which quietly backs up any changes on your computer hard drive every hour. The Maxtor One Touch 4 Plus 1 TB hard drive comes formatted for Windows and includes several hundred megabytes of software pre-installed for backing up your computer at the press of the lighted button on the front of the drive. The instructions tell Mac users to use the included CD to reformat the drive and install Maxtor's backup software for Macintosh. Since I planed to use the backup software built into Leopard, I never inserted the CD. I simply connected the drive to my computer via the hard drives single USB 2.0 mini port (it also has two firewire 400 ports) and my computer instantly recognized the drive. I used Disk Utility in the utilities folder to reformat the drive for Macintosh, removing all the Windows software, and I was good to go. Highly recommended.

Works OK, a few minor complaints
I was shopping for a large USB drive to serve as a backup device for my videos, music, system files, etc, and ran across this. I liked the looks of this maxtor drive as the external casing was fairly sturdy. In addition, it had some "maxtor backup" software included on the hard drive (which I figured I could use), and so I picked it up.

Overall, I'm satisfied with the hardware. It's quiet, runs cool, and so far as been reliable (a couple months). The reason I'm knocking off a couple of stars is the software that comes with it (and I was depending on). Here's a list of shortcommings and minor problems I had with the backup software:

* The backup software does not save hidden files. If there is a hidden file or directory, it will be entirely skipped. I wish this was specified as a limitation on the box as I might have reconsidered my purchase.

* The backup software only allows the backup of disks directly attached to the computer, and not network attached storage. Again, I wish this was specified on the box.

* The scheduling of the backup is very limited. I could only figure a way to schedule 1 backup. I would have preferred to backup some stuff nightly, others weekly.

* There is a pretty cool disk imaging feature which allows you to directly image your boot drive to the maxtor. In case of catastrophic failure, you can boot via cdrom, and restore from the maxtor to your boot drive. Unfortunately, the file created on the maxtor is severely fragmented. And running defrag on the disk resulted in the system hanging for hours as it attempted to defrag the extremely large file that was out there (120 gigabytes). I ended up having to power cycle the machine to kill this process. I attempted this a few times with the same results.

I ended up uninstalling all of the maxtor management software, and reformatting the disk and going with a 3rd party backup package. That seems to be working well.

I have 2 suggestions for the next revision of this drive:

1) The drive "sleeps" after a while of no access. When it is accessed, it takes a while (15 secs?) to spin up. I wish there were a way to turn this off.

2) There is one multi-functional access light. If the light is fading in and out the drive is sleeping. If the drive light is blinking, it's being accessed. If it's solid, the disk is spun up and not being accessed. I would prefer to have separate indicator light for each state. Very minor nit here.

In summary, a solid drive. Just don't count on using the backup software included.

Defective drive.
I got this drive new and tried reformatting for a Mac (extended journaled). The drive failed to take the formatting and it would no longer mount. I tried DiskWarrior to see if I could resurrect it. No luck. I'm gonna return it and try another. I've had excellent luck with all my other Maxtor drives, so I suspect that this one was just a bad drive.

**Update**
This drive must be formatted for the Mac in a unique way: In DiskUtility, you have to first format for MS-DOS (FAT), then partition the drive for Mac formatting (Extended Journaled, or whatever you choose). In addition to that, you must also chose Apple Partition Map in the options tab. This is the solution to the problem that I and others have had with this drive.

Maxtor should be more clear on this issue as it is the only drive that I've had to format in this way in over 20 years of working on a Macintosh.