Customer Reviews

Maxtor A01B120 OneTouch USB 7200 RPM 120 GB External Hard Drive

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

I loved this drive at first. It was exactly what I was looking for as a backup solution. Allowed me to archive an entire volume and then store the disk in a safe. Perfect.

But when I tried to perform my second ever backup with this drive (three weeks after initial purchase), things got ugly. The Retrospect software got halfway through a backup set and then froze. I then got a error message like: "Delayed Write Failed : Windows was unable to save all the data for the file C:\somefolder\somefile. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere."

The drive itself started making loud grinding and metalic clicking sounds. Hard drive crash, I assume? Same grinding/clicking any time I power up the drive. So I can't even get to the data I backed up a few weeks ago. Sorry Maxtor, I need a *reliable* backup drive. That's the idea behind backing up your data, remember? And now I have no backup solution and have to deal with a mail-order return hassle. Take your quality assurance people out back and flog them.

Bought the 250g Maxtor 1-touch last year and the drive was great, acting as an archive and a backup to my smaller 20g hard drive. Unfortunately, I had no backup to this backup and the drive kicked the bucket last week after 11 months on the job. Lost 120g of data that I had no back up for. Sending t oHD Recovery outfiuts would ost $1 - $2000 at minimium. So, if you buy one, I would recommend buying a second one as well. You can get a cheapie. The idea is that having two hard drives crash at the same time is pretty remote possibility. Just a thought from one very veyr bummed user.

I was extremely excited about this drive but it almost crashed my brand new high end gaming system. First of all, the drive would periodically fail to be detected (until I restarted). Then one day, my computer basically stops working - everything ground to a halt and every program took minutes to open then crashed. I was on the phone with my pc's tech support and they were ready to replace the system completely when I simply unplugged my Maxtor Onetouch and everything went back to normal. This drive has some MAJOR compatibility issues. Maybe you will get lucky and things will be fine but I don't think its worth the risk.

p.s. The backup software is also extremely difficult to use.

I have been using Maxtor external hard drives for just over a year now and have made recommendations to family and colleagues which have resulted in them buying many of them as well. So with experience with close to a dozen hard drives, we have not had any problems and have nothing but praise for the drives.

First off, with internal hard drive prices for laptops so expensive and so difficult to install, external hard drives that use firewire (IEEE1394) are a great option. These hard drives use both firewire and USB, so you can take the information and hot swap it among multiple computer (like a thumb drive) or keep it plugged in to a single computer for use a secondary hard drive. I have found virtually no speed difference between accessing files on the external hard drive versus the internal.

The automatic backup feature, makes the hard drive all that much more useful. It comes bundled with Dantz Retrospect Express program which is an easy-to-use option for automatically backing up just what you want with a touch of a button. I backup often, usually just punching the button as I go meet to clients. It usually finishes the automated process by the time I return. Because backing up is so easy to do, when I did lose the hard drive on one of my laptops, I barely missed a beat after I got it replaced, simply restoring the drive image to make my new laptop look just like my old one.

I highly recommend Maxtor external hard drives.

Having owned three different Maxtor hardrives, this one being one of them, and all of the dying withing a year (resulting in complete loss of all data) I can safely say that Maxtor is the worst choice you can make when it comes to buying a harddrive.

My Maxtor drive failed within a year. I lost 40 GB of valuable data that had taken me years to collect.
Apparently, this is a common occurrence. Avoid Maxtor at all costs.

The Maxtor One Touch is definitely not just a cosmetic upgrade of their DV 5000. The "One Touch" backup app., a customized version of Dantz Retrospect, is much improved, ie easier to use. Even though the unit still runs a little hot, the new aluminum case is an improved heat sink and it is quiet, quiet, quiet.

The problem, however, is that with, at least, Windows 98SE it does not reliably load at startup. At first I thought the problem was related to the timed spin down which can be set through a desktop utility, but proved erratic in operation. After exhaustive troubleshooting, however, the issues proved to be independent. The only substantive fix that Maxtor can recommend appears to be a Microsoft Supplement for Win 98 which did not
work.

The "One Touch" has the potential to be a great product once they shake out the bugs. My advice, wait until later in the product cycle to buy.

When I bought this drive, I was a bit skeptical after I read the reviews on this page. To my surprise, I had the best experience with it. I normally do heavy video stuff so I needed a drive thats just not quiet but also performance effective. This drive definitely made me smile when I hooked my MiniDV camcorder on one USB port and the drive on the other, and drive had no problems recording all the digital video without dropping any frames at all. I dont care if Maxtor copied the design of this drive from some other company, all I know that it's quiet, fast and works well.

I bought two of these from Costco for use with my Linksys NSLU2. The Linksys NSLU2 allows you to hook a USB drive up to it and share the drive across your local network. Everything worked great for about a week and then I started experiencing strange errors. I'd get a delayed write failure or a network error stating that the network path no longer existed. At first, I suspected the Linksys device, since it is really responsibe for the network connection. However, after extensive testing (including switching for another Linksys and switching to other USB Drives) and reading other reviews that report the same error (when hooking the drive directly up to a computer), I've concluded that the problem must be the USB Drive itself. Fortunately, Costco has an extremely generous return policy, so I'm taking this thing back....

I purchased the Maxtor hd and then read the reviews. I assumed I'd be shipping it back for a refund. Maxtor has a "Read Me First" page which corrects an error in the User's Guide. Perhaps this was a problem with early shipments? Since I have a slight touch of Alzheimers, I actually got to that section of the User's Guide and noticed that the written instructions didn't match what I was seeing on the screen. While I was fumbling around for Maxtor's 800 number, I ran across the Read Me First page again which guided through the rest of the set up. All easy enough. I backed up my documents, 3 Gb, which took only a few minutes with the 2.0 USB connection. If not for the error in the User's Guide I would've rated this buy 5 stars. The one button update works fine. On a noise level, Maxtor rates between my Dell and Gateway, so on that basis, I rate the Maxtor noise completely acceptable. The only issue left is longevity.