Customer Reviews

Maxtor ONE TOUCH II 250 GB External Hard Drive with Firewire and USB 2.0 ( E01G250 )

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

As a former Microsoft software engineer who assisted in the development of the FAT and NTFS file systems, I can confidently say that this drive's backup software is one of the biggest pieces of trash I have ever encountered in the retail market. The bottom line is simple: it DOES NOT WORK as advertised. Among its many deficiencies, the developers have foolishly developed their own user interface, depriving customers of the standard interface they have come to expect in Windows applications. As a result, the backup software is unnecessarily difficult to use. To make matters worse, I have encountered file-copy errors each and every time I have attempted to use this product(these seem to be bugs in the backup software, not problems with Windows or the Maxtor drive itself), and the user interface is so impoverished that it cannot properly describe the problem. Worse, the application does not respond properly to various simple commands: such as start, stop, etc. In short, my experiences with this product have been totally unsatisfactory. The quality of the backup software is so low that it feels like it could have been developed by 14-year-olds working in their bedroom. Maxtor should be ASHAMED of itself for shipping such a poorly engineered and badly tested piece of junk! Like you, I work hard for my money -- so I hate it when I find I've been tricked into spending it on a product that can't live up to its marketing hype!!!

Here is a review of the 200 gb drive

go to digitalvideoediting.com to see there review

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Enter the OneTouch II from Maxtor, which ships complete with software that's been upgraded to Danz Retrospect Express HD. It's a great improvement, and much more sophisticated than the earlier version. Like the earlier Retrospect Express software, you can automatically back up your files every night, but now the software can create restore points similar to Windows System Restore, allowing you to fully restore your entire drive choosing from whichever date you would like. The software continues backing up versions and showing you their restore dates until the entire drive is full. Of course, you can restore individual files as well, and if you want, you can still back up your system the way the previous software did where it makes an exact duplicate of your hard drive without compressing anything. That's versatile. I was impressed with this new software, and began using it every night soon after I installed it. If you'd rather do it yourself, you can use the much-touted OneTouch system, where all you have to do is push one button and it backs up everything you specify. Another great attribute of this one-button feature is the ability to set it so that any other software backup package of your choice is launched when you push the OneTouch button.
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They point out that the firewire transfer speeds are slow, just and FYI. also the software is much improved over version 1 one touch drives.

Have fun and get it done

I bought two of these within three years, one 80GB and one 200GB, each to be used exclusively for backup purposes. Each died shortly after the one-year warranty elapsed. The second one overheated so badly, that I literally had to unplug the device, and wait about 30 minutes before I could even touch it. I figured that the first time was a fluke; two in a row, though, is probably not.

The Retrospect software was also completely unreliable. I had configured the script to run automatically twice a week, and with each drive the software would mysteriously remove the scheduled script about once every two months, and I would have to reconfigure the software at that point. While I'm completely comfortable doing so, many people would not be, and those are the people that Maxtor, among other manufacturers, are targeting with these types of products. People want overall ease of use with technology products, and the Maxtor external backups were never as such for me.

I purchased a Seagate external backup drive after my Maxtor 200GB fried, and I've owned it for almost a year. The software has never failed, and the backups have always run as scheduled. The backup software is also far more user friendly than Retrospect. The only positive I'd give the Maxtor drives over the Seagates are that the former is quieter, but that isn't a dealbreaker for me. I work in information technology, and have for 15 years. I'm not one of those I.T. guys who always swears by one manufacturer's hard drive, but at this point, Maxtor has lost me as a customer.

After installation of Maxtor OneTouch II the Windows Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) showed retrospect.exe getting 98-99% of CPU time--which made all other applications v-e-r-y s-l-o-w, since they got hardly any CPU time at all. I clicked a button in the Maxtor software to configure Retrospect HD, but nothing happened. Some of the technical support reps at Maxtor did not seem to know about this kind of situation; after several calls, though, one who did answered. (Hurray!) He sounded very aware of this kind of situation. Something--probably a firewall, he said (I installed Maxtor OneTouch II on a PC at an office of a large corporation, where there certainly is a firewall)--blocked communication with the Retrospect HD software. The Retrospect HD software made a call and waited for a response it never got. It never got a response because something (firewall?) blocked communication. He recommended I uninstall Retrospect HD and install Retrospect 6.0. Retrospect 6.0 is on the CD of the Maxtor OneTouch II kit. I did what he recommended. Now it looks fine.

We have 5 of these in our office. The intent was to use them as baby NASes. After a year's worth of usage two of the drives are outright dead and one has so many trashed sectors on it that a lot of data has been rendered inaccessible.

As if that's not bad enough, Maxtor has decided lately to ship a more bare bones Dantz Retrospect software with each unit. A bare bones unit of a piece of software that wasn't that impressive to begin with is just not a good idea. I called tech support and sales at Maxtor and asked why a $300 hardware came with a full blown Retrospect software a month ago and why does it now come with a skeletal version of that software and was basically ignored. Good job, Maxtor. That's the way to keep the customer coming back.

And these are, sadly, not the only woes. The One-touch backup idea, while a good idea in theory, is a veritable mess in practice. Half the time it doesn't work and when it does it has been known to induce a BSOD on some of our XP machines. And, no, this is not a Microsoft problem.

I'm going to check out Buffalo Station and will probably use the 5 Maxtor drives as they were intended - as doorstops in our office.

The One Touch was easy to install and worked fine. Fine, that is, until my Windows XP started freezing on shutdown and when returning from standby mode. Because disabling the One Touch fixed the freezing, I concluded that it must be the culprit. So until I figure out what's going on I will have to manually enable the One Touch and run manual back-ups. That eliminates 90% of the convenience I was looking for. So, nice package, good concept, but doesn't work well with my particular configuration.

I purchased 2 of these devices, and ensured my settings allowed fast device removal (turned off write caching) and on numerous occasions, I just lose the partition table off one. Poof, gone, looks like a RAW drive. I have to re-partition, and format, losing all my backus.

Fortunately, I've learned to copy truely valuable backups to DVDs...

Mine stopped working after two weeks. Maxtor customer service doesn't help, either. First, the one-touch software stopped working, and now the whole package seems to have stopped working. I have reinstalled the drivers and software but to no avail at this time. I bought mine in spite of critical reviews, but this was a mistake.

I will update this review if I can get it fixed, but for now a big thumbs down.

I bought 4 of these for video editing. They are hooked up using the Firewire ports in series (one to the next to the next). At this point, less than half a year later, only 2 out of the four are recognized by Windows XP. Looking around for different drives for my next project, but am limiting my search to external drives with a capacity of 200MB and no higher, as that seems to be the most reliable capacity.

I digitized my entire music collection onto one of these drives. I then bought a second one to backup. Good thing I did. At least once every three to four months, 50% or more of the subdirectories on the disk just vanish. I then reformat and copy the files from the backup and the drive works again for a month or two. The strange thing is, iTunes can still find the files, but windows explorer cannot.