Maxtor One-Touch II, are they worth the investment

RonR · Jan 17, 2006

I'll jump in, but don't have experience with Maxtor.

Last week, I bought a 250 gig external hard drive (western digital). It came with retrospect.

My son, the computer literate one, was here to help guide me. It was pretty painless. I hooked it via USB and due to my ignorance, I did a copy of the hard drive in my pc, not a backup.

After further guidance from Son, I did a backup of the main pc. Also did one for a second PC and a laptop. Each is stored on the HD and is available to reinstall.

Actually, when I get a bigger HD for the second pc, I plan to load retrospect on it and then do a restore of the main pc to it, so it will then be a clone of the main pc.

Rather than try to do this over my network, I plan to just move the external drive around and back them up as needed.

Ron

PineRidge · Jan 17, 2006

All very interesting guys. So much so that I visited TigerDirect today and ordered the 300GB Maxtor. I really need another form of backup in place ASAP and I'm confident that the Maxtor will be my best bet for the bucks. Thanks for all the replies and ideas.

rswyan · Jan 18, 2006

Bob,

Errr .... sorry to disagree (respectfully) .....

( It is.. )
Any time ya want to compare sustained transfer rates for data transfers of any size, Firewire vs. USB, just lemme know. Like Ken said ..... Firewire is faster when moving any significant amount of data. Here's a couple of comparisions:

Firewire vs. USB comparision

Firewire Vs. USB 2.0

And a little historical overview (not particularly complimentary to Firewire but good data nonetheless):

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1104

( Firewire is on the way out USB2 is taking over. )
I'm just curious - what exactly do you base this statement on ?

.... I'm sure it's news to the members of the 1394 Trade Association:

http://www.1394ta.org/index.html

( The good part about USB is it's backward compatible )
And Firewire isn't ?

( and all computers already have a USB port. )
The accurate statement would be:

"and all NEW computers already have a USB port. "

The fact of the matter, as pointed out in one or more of the articles linked above, is that they are different standards - one is a "PC" standard (USB) and the other is a "consumer electronics" standard (Firewire.) It goes without saying that the latter is a far larger universe than the former. I wouldn't look for it to disappear any time soon.

Really the ideal way to go with a device such as is being discussed here is get a drive which has both interfaces - that way it can be moved around easily to just about any (newer) computer.

PineRidge · Jan 18, 2006

Randy good information in the links that you supplied.

It got me to wondering about the connectivity of the Maxtor so I checked the specs. and it said: Maxtor II has both FireWire and USB 2.0 interfaces for easy connection. For PC and Mac.

COOL! /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif Thanks again.....

IslandTractor · Jan 18, 2006

The stand alone USB external hard drives work well as back up devices. Ideally you would have two of them about the same size as your computer hard drive. Rotate backups. However, most people do with just one and hope nothing tragic happens during the actual back up time (when you will be overwriting your earlier backup). These things are getting cheap enough now (about $100 for 80 or 160meg) that it is almost worth having a couple. Remember to store at least one of the backups off site.

I use two smaller external drives by eliminating things like photos and music that I can back up separately onto DVDR (which I keep off site). Not quite as convenient for restoring your system but all you need to do is add the photos and songs back at your convenience, the main backup of system and important data files can be done with smaller drives that way. You can even take the HD out of an old computer and buy just the external box that allows you to convert the old HD into a backup but the cost savings is only about $30-50 and for that sum I'd rather have a fresh new drive for backup.

BobReeves · Jan 18, 2006

Hi rswyan,

We are looking at this through different glasses, your a MAC guy I'm a PC guy. The point of view weighs on what we read into all the stuff you referenced. The first paragraph of the PC mag article says USB2 is faster but then goes on to say Fire Wire is faster in some applications and USB2 is faster in others.

From a PC viewpoint why would one want to buy a FireWire device when the computer they have is ready to go for USB2, in order to use FireWire they also need to buy a FW card. The market will dictate the direction the industry goes and USB is winning, again the PC mag article you referenced pretty much says this.

We will never agree on much of anything, MAC guys and PC guys are kinda like democrats and republicans so this will be my last post on the subject.

Respectfully
Bob

ksmmoto · Jan 18, 2006

I have been using a Maxtor 120G External for two years now, works great. I don't use the button, but I do use the Danz Retrospect.

My main laptop crashed a year ago and I was able to rebuild fairly quick. I was slacking on backups so I lost about a weeks worth.

I access mine through a network all the time. Need to have the computer the drive is plugged into on. Linksys builds a network access for hard drives and memory sticks that is stand alone for about $85.00.

ksmmoto

rswyan · Jan 18, 2006

Bob,

No doubt there is a difference in viewpoints /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

It's true - from a computer perspective my Firewire experience has largely been on Macs (but then when we built and set up an inhouse video studio for a large software developer of highend retail P.O.S. software out in CA, we used a PC as the editing station - mostly because the owner of the company simply couldn't allow his installed base of clients to see that he wasn't using the platform that he actually developed for ... it was a PR issue more than anything - but we still used Firewire as the interface for the video editing station on the PC.)

( From a PC viewpoint why would one want to buy a FireWire device when the computer they have is ready to go for USB2 )
Faster sustained transfer rates, wider compatibility with higher end audio/video gear, and Firewire cards are dirt-cheap are three that come to mind real quick.

The current implementation of Firewire (Firewire 800) has a data xfer rate of 800 Mbps - compared to USB 2.0's 480 Mbps rate. Firewire 800 cards and bridgeboards have been available for a couple of years, and fairly reasonably priced (similar or lower price points as Firewire 400 when it was introduced)

At this point, with Firewire 800, the interface speed isn't really much of an issue - at least for connecting single drives (arrays and RAIDs are another matter though) since the interface is capable of sustained xfer rates greater (around 100 megabytes - not bits - per second) than all but the very fastest desktop drives are capable of. And if that's a problem then Firewire 1600 (due shortly), with it's 1.6 Gigabit/sec data xfer rate should handle it .... and if not, wait a year or so and Firewire 3200 will probably be out.

( The market will dictate the direction the industry goes and USB is winning, again the PC mag article you referenced pretty much says this. )
Yeah, well I didn't quite read it that way myself ..... just keep in mind that PC Mag article was written back in February 2003 and Firewire ain't exactly disappeared quite yet.

In fact it exists in over 200 million units of audio/video gear, computers, and computer peripherals. Not too bad for a technology on it's way out. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

( We will never agree on much of anything, )
I certainly hope that is not the case.

( MAC guys and PC guys are kinda like democrats and republicans )
Now you might have something there .... /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif I'd like to think that I'm sort of a liberitarian myself ..... (with a small L)

( so this will be my last post on the subject. )
Mine too - and I will now behave myself .... promise. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

ronjhall · Jan 19, 2006

Mike
Your post reminded me that I have a new Maxtor One-Touch setting on the shelf for a over a year. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif Got it down, read the manual. Loaded software. Figured out how to partition the drive and backed up my 2 computers. It sure was easy on my computers. But hooking it up to a network may not be as easy.
Thanks for the reminder though. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

PineRidge · Jan 19, 2006

Hey Ron I'm glad we helped. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

The Maxtor One Touch II came this afternoon and with the Dantz software supplied quickly and quietly backed up the hard-drive on the computer that it was attached to. Unfortunately it didn't even see the network. I reckon that means that it will be necessary to upgrade the software or move the One-Touch from computer to computer.