Customer Reviews

Seagate STM305004OTAB05-RK 3.5-Inch PushButton Maxtor OneTouch III 500 GB 2.5-Inch USB 2.0/FireWire400 External Hard Drive

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

Reliable, attractive looking drive.
I also have 3 300Gb Maxtor ONETOUCH II drives
that have worked flawlessly with my Mac G4 and then G5 for over 3 years.


Also have the Maxtor OneTouch III 600GB Turbo
External Hard Drive FireWire that does RAID 0 and RAID 1.


I did have one Maxtor drive , beieve it was a 160Gb drive that failed after about 5 years continuous use,
but that just shows you should always have multiple backups of irreplacable data--

(in my case family videos, some from 1950's 8mm film converted to digital format.

i've always had good luck with Maxtor. When any of
the drives reach 3 to4 years old, i buy a a larger Maxtor and back up the older drives, just in case.

For those people whose reviews indicate they've had trouble, my guess is they did not format it for mac.
I know it's suppose to be formatted for mac as it ships, but when I connect a new maxtor to my mac, OS X invariably ask if I want to reformat since it's unreadable or somesuch.

Jeff

This is a great drive. Exactly what I was looking for. I wanted something to backup both my PC and my Mac ibook. I chose a firewire connection because my ibook doesn't support USB 2. The drive is quick, quiet and stylish. Installation is pretty much plug n' play for PC use. However, if you want to use the drive interchangeably between Mac and PC you will want to give consideration to how it is formatted. Out of the box the drive is formatted using NTFS file format. This means a PC can read and write to the drive but Macs can only read the drive - no write access. (Unfortunately I found this out the hard way after backing up my PC first.) So if you desire to read and write from both PC and Mac you will need to format the drive as FAT32. Once that's done you're good to go. No need for separate partitions. Great external drive for the money! First time I've used a Maxtor product but would purchase again without hesitation.

This drive has huge amounts of space on it and works well when used for backups and storage programs included with Windows XP. However, the person who designed the included software package should be tortured to death and his/her remains thrown to the dogs. If you are looking for a lot of space, this is your drive. Just do yourself a favor and don't even look at the enclosed software. You'll thank me later.

I have used Maxtor external hard drives for backup purposes for a long time, and have not had any real problems to date. I have two of the early One Touch I (5000 DV) models (each with 120 GB of space)that have been running continuously for years (both are still lit up as I type this). I also have two of the One Touch II external drives (each with 250 GB of space)that I purchased because I really did expect those earlier drives to fail at some point, and they have on/off switches which (believe it or not) were not present on the early One Touch 5000 DV models, and they have a metallic case that is sturdy enough for travel, can be positioned vertically, and, at least for hardware, are stylish and attractive looking sitting on top of your desk - should you decide to place them there.

In addition, have been running the full version of Retrospect Backup software (not the abbreviated version that ships with Maxtor drives)for years, and it has saved my behind from main computer hard drive problems many times. The software is highly recommended by me. I have the software set up to run one script that backs up only my essential files, and another script that backs up video recordings, tv shows, etc.(the disposable stuff), and I use these multiple external drives for redundancy and to make sure only the newest stuff on my main computer gets backed up sequencially every day to alternate drives, and I shut off the power to the "off day" drives to make sure no power surges etc, effect them.

As for the One Touch III (500 GB) drive, again running the most current version of Retrospect (full version), I have had not one problem. It does what it supposed to do, runs cool and quiet, and looks great on the desk.

I purchased the One Touch III for backing up the large video files that have been accumulating on my main home office computer - due to my personal video recorder daily recording two - hour long - TV programs and the occaisional DVD files that I make. The drive is speedy, and since I have three media hubs (an older Prismiq, and two newer D-Link DSM 520's) capable of distributing content throughout my house via Cat 5 cabling, the speed really is noticable over the earlier One Touch I drives. Whenever I have had any problems with these Maxtor drives has only been with the early version drives and when I have used them to send video files to other rooms in my house via the media hubs to TV's in those rooms. Those earlier drives sometimes will hiccup and need to be reformatted because they apparently cannot handle the speed requirements - but the Maxtor One Touch II and III models have no problems in that regard. As such, I no longer use the One Touch I drives in conjunction with the media hubs...they just cant' handle the speed.

Because I am looking to move this video capture stuff over to an older, but capable, computer and off of my main home office computer, I've been looking at the Network Attached Storage Drives from both Maxtor and Buffalo.

I am, though, disappointed in the reviews of the 1 TB Network Attached Storage product (from both manufacturers) and especially the comments regarding service and support. I have never had to call Maxtor support, so I can't comment on that myself, but I do sense that these drive manufacturers feel that the cost of hard drives - with such amazing data storage capabilities - are so cheap, they don't really want - or need to -support the customer ... they'd rather sell you a new drive. Very short sighted, in my opinion. Anyway, that's my two cents...

I barely had this drive for 6 months before it died. Completely stoped responding and the drive refused to spin up. After a fairly tedious return process, I finaly got the replacement and barely two months later it has also died.

I don't think my pattern of use has been particularly abusive or excessive. It does tend to spend a fair ammount of time powered on but the drive seems to go to sleep when not actively in use (quite often) so this can't really explain the repeated drive failures.

A couple bits of advice if you DO choose to buy one of these:

1) Keep the original packaging. Unless you want to pay $20 for an "advance replacement", you need to use their packaging (or something almost exactly like it) to return your drive for replacement.
2) Don't use it for long term storage and don't put anything on here you don't have duplicated somewhere else or don't mind losing.
3) Register it when you buy it and keep the recepit.

That's not to say that it doesn't work fairly well when it's working. If not for those multiple periods of it NOT working, I would have been quite pleased.

I am writing this review as I pass minute 42 of being on hold with Seagate customer service. The installation CD arrived without the Mac software and no phone number to call for help. After a week of waiting on the web request I was sent a link to download the software. Once downloaded the software would not install with out a license code. After another day of waiting I got an email giving me a phone number to call for the license code. After initially being told that Maxtor didn't support the Mac I now continue to wait on hold with the faint hope that eventually I will talk with someone who can actually help me and I will be able to use this drive.

I am totally satisfied with the above listed product. In the past 15 years I have dealt almost exclusively with Maxtor Hard Drive Products and have found that their products are second to none. They stand behind their products better than any company I have ever dealt with.

I just had a run-in with Maxtor. After purchasing their drive, it failed within 6 months. I was then told that I would be charged a MINIMUM of $700. Data recovery, you see, is apparently not covered by the warranty. If you attempt to recover it anywhere else, since they have to open the drive to do it, you're no longer under the warranty.

I was then told by them that I should never rely upon one backup unit. THE POINT WAS THAT IT WAS THE BACKUP UNIT! For such an expensive item, I think I deserve more service.

I purchased this external hard drive because I've always liked my 250 GB Maxtor One Touch although it gets a lot hotter than the physically larger Western Digital drive I own. I was hoping to use the 500 GB Maxtor One Touch III to backup 3 computers. Unfortunately it failed in the first week. Maxtor (Seagate) replaced it with a "refurbished" drive that was DOA. Replacing the "refurbished" drive will take several more weeks, and I'm wondering if I could trust another "refurbished" drive.

The drive died just five weeks after purchase. The minimum cost for data recovery was $1400 in 4-6 weeks, and started at $2400 or more for faster service. Seagate/Maxtor will replace the item with a...refurbished drive.

Sayonara Seagate/Maxtor. You'll get no more business from me!