Customer Reviews

Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 500 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 400 Desktop External Hard Drive

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(37)

 

 

Purchased item based on high recommendation, i have been greatly disappointed. It worked well for a few days then kaput, started flashing lights and my comuter wouldnt recognize it. I will be returning to amazon if I dont get through to customer service, the website they have is not helpful. only problem is all my music is on this piece of junk and now it wont work.

highly NOT recommended.

I have had my OneTouch 4 Plus for over 2 months and use it every other day to back up my photos and videos, and so far it has had no problems whatsoever. As with all hard drives, you should keep at least 2 backup copies, each on a separate external drive. (So you should have 3 copies total, one on your primary internal drive(s), the other two on backup drives.) For the most valuable files, I also keep DVD-R copies.

This drive is fast and quiet. I just wish it had a power switch, since I only use it every other day. I haven't tried to bundled software yet; I use Retrospect for full backups and use drag-and-drop for quick backups from Windows.

I purchased two of these drives brand new (not refurbished). They both arrived nicely packed but when I did the "test drive" function both drives came up as defective. I couldn't believe two of two would be bad and called their technical support. The call center is obviously in India and the connections were bad and the people were not helpful at all. I asked if there were any other tests and if this could be a firmware problem. They had no clue what I was talking about. They kept repeating if the self test said they were defective then they must be defective. All they offered for a replacement was a refurbished drive and I had to send the new drives to them first and then wait for a replacement. Who would take a risk that the refurbished replacements would be any better?? I was a fan of Seagate quality, but NOT anymore. BAD, BAD experience.

I bought this hard drive to use exclusively as my Time Machine backup on my MacBook Pro. I formatted it for Mac and it worked like a charm... for 4 days! Then on day 5 I noticed that the power light wasn't on. I unplugged the drive and plugged it back in - nothing. I took the adapter and tested it by using it on a battery charger. The batteries charged just fine, so I know the adapter works. I could exchange the drive because it's brand new, but my data is already on it so I am not about to hand it over for a new one because there's some confidential stuff on there. I guess I just have to take the $170 loss and get a new drive. It won't be a Maxtor.

I bought this product a few months ago. I formatted the drive and have been using it since. Two days ago when I tried to access the drive, I get a message that says the drive is not formatted and do I want to format it. In other words, it suffered a drive failure. Seagate (the manufacturer) via their tech support let me know this drive can fail and will sell me software to retrieve my data, but will not provide a free copy of the software. In other words, they want more money to fix their defective product.

I have two Maxtor OneTouch drives (120GB) that I got in 2005. They have both crashed this year. One was recoverable by reformating the drive, so I lost ALL the data on it. The other could not be recovered. Maxtor charges $1700 (starting price) to recover data from their crashed drive. That seems like a lucrative business for them (especially based on the lousy reviews they are getting).
Everyone is right: You are stuck with these drives, since you would never send it back to their 3rd World tech support and risk someone getting all your data from it.

I have used Maxtor internal & external drives for years. Then, along comes this piece of junk. First off, the drive is housed in a cheap case made of very thin metal and plastic. It hooks up easy enough, but this one only lasted 3 days before dying. If you read reviews at various sites, you'll find that this is an epidemic with this useless paperweight, but I was in a hurry and didn't do my homework. Stuff like this really makes you wish that some attorney would put together a class action against Seagate.

Regarding service, you can't understand the tech on the other end AND they clearly don't know how to do anything except tell you that they will send you a reconditioned drive once you return yours. When you think about it though, this makes perfect sense because they've had so many returns on these things that I'm sure they have a warehouse full of reconditioned units. One thing to think about though is this ... do you really want to send back a drive that has lots of your info on it and run the risk that some techno-weenie at the factory in a third world country might get their hands on it? Not me. I threw this piece of junk in the trash after I drilled 4 holes in it and counted it as an expensive lesson.

The next thing I did was spend $50 more and buy a LaCie that is built like a brick, looks great, is quiet and just plain works. Bye-bye Maxtor (Seagate).

I bought the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 500 GB external hard drive in May 2008 based on Maxtor's good reputation and the software capabilities. It's a sharp looking drive. As of a couple weeks ago it's now a very expensive paperweight. SeaGate Techs weren't helpful in figuring out why the drive suddenly decided to password protect itself (I didn't put a password on it), nor why Windows XP won't recognize it nor why even though the software states that the drive now needs to be formatted, it can't do it. They told me they never heard of the drive doing this before, and yet there's now tons of information on the net and on the SeaGate forums regarding this particular issue with the Maxtor drives. They offered a replacement, but I can't send it to them because of the confidential information on it. I tried all the fixes people listed and ran password cracker programs and data recovery programs on the drive and nothing worked. I replaced it with another brand--I won't buy another SeaGate (Maxtor) product which is a shame as I've worked for years in the computer industry and they were top of the line back in the day. If you value your data, use another brand. And one other suggestion--use more than one external hard drive for redundancy. I had some of the data on CD's, but really wasn't worried at the time since it was a Maxtor. Learned my lesson.

I have had my Dell computer with the same internal hard drive for over 6 years. For extra storage space, I purchased the Maxtor One Touch 3. It failed after 11 months. Seagate (which took over Maxtor) replaced it, but the replacement lasted less than three months before it too failed. In each case, Maxtor offered to try to retrieve my data for over $1,000. After much complaining, Seagate offered me the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus. It failed after seven months. Do not buy this poor quality product.

I use both this drive and a Lacie 600GB. In the Lacie's defense, the 600 is more than a year older than my Maxtor, but the size and price change is amazing. This Maxtor is physically quite small and very good looking. And this Amazon price is about half of what I paid for the Lacie that only has 100GB more.

I realize all drives are prone to break, and if mine has any problems I'll post them here. Otherwise, it seems great! Runs quite cool too.