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127 of 130 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good value for money, May 23, 2005
This review is from: Maxtor One Touch II 200 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive (E01E200) (Electronics)
Had it for a few days now and it seems to work fine.
A few quirks setting up : when connected to a USB port on the front panel of my PC, the device isn't recognized - it HAS to be connected to one of the back ports (the ones that are directly on you motherboard). Since I have no problems whatsoever connecting other USB devices (camera/memory stick) to the ports at the front panel, I find this quite odd. I would recommend getting the USB/Firewire combo version of this drive for a few $ more, to avoid any possible USB conflicts...
There are two install options : 1) basic (drivers+utility) or 2) basic + the bundled, slimmed down Retrospect software by Dantz - I wouldn't rely on it for critical 'full system' backups since it's awkward, limited software. If you don't buy the Maxtor One Touch II just for the sake of having an external, large capacity drive to which you can drag the files/folders of your choice, but are serious about backing up your complete system and ALL the data on it, use the drive with Acronis' "True Image" software - at $ 50 it's the best choice for imaging software; it works out of the box - unlike the bundled Retrospect software which also requires you download/install the Microsoft .NET framework application.
And besides disk images created with True Image, you can of course drag any file/folder onto the Maxtor for easy/fast access, meaning you can have the best of both worlds. Just a thought.
The Maxtor utility allows you to optionally protect the entire drive's contents with a password - without it the drive cannot be accessed. A good feature if you need it, like when taking the drive with you somewhere - or even losing it somehow.
Hardware : the drive is very quiet, which is a big plus (I have an old Lacie external HD that sounds like a plane taking off when powered on), it also looks/feels nice and sturdy and sits neatly on your desk in upright or flat position. The drive runs at 7200rpm and has an 8Mb cache which means you shouln't encounter any problems even when you're really straining the disk.
At the time of writing (May 2005), the product offers good value for money, both in terms of performance and "storage per buck". I think the bundled software is junk and recommend using the drive either "as is" for creating backups of your files, and/or use it with a good disc imaging program like Acronis True Image. Everyone knows you should always create more than one backup occasionally, e.g. to DVD/RW, but this way you'll have all your data and system settings ready for restoring in any scenario - from accidentally erasing/modifying files to having a serious crash / system failure.
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55 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great device for a ton of extra storage, September 24, 2005
This review is from: Maxtor One Touch II 200 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive (E01E200) (Electronics)
Some of the other reviewers complained about the basic Retrospect software that comes with this drive and I have to agree that it's a pretty poor backup solution. However, I now own three of these drives and love them!
I use two at work with upgraded Multi-Server Retrospect backup software to back up three servers and 60 client computers. The backups are far faster than any tape I've ever used and it's much easier to find files when I need to restore something.
The Maxtor One Touch II that I use at home is used simply as a USB drive. I've copied over two thousand iTunes songs into a My Music folder and I've copied over three thousand digital photos of my family into a My Pictures folder and I still have over 130GB of free space.
I feel much safer having my music and photos on a drive I could grab in a hurry in case of an emergency rather than trying to find dozens of CD-R's that I've burned over the years.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Work It Like A Hard Drive (It's Dual Voltage Too), August 15, 2006
This review is from: Maxtor One Touch II 200 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive (E01E200) (Electronics)
I am one who likes to check customer reviews before purchasing any electronic items--camera, MP3 players, DVD players etc. I usually pay more attention to the negative comments to check for a trend of what could be wrong with the item. Based on a coworker's recommendation as well as comparison shopping, my search lead me to the customer reviews in Amazon, CNET, J&R, and New Egg. With the Maxtor One Touch II 200 GB HD there seems to be three common threads. They are as follows:
1) Over time the drive gets hot
2) You will loose your data
3) It makes noise
Well as of today, I've owned this drive for just over a month, and it has served its purpose beautifully. I only needed it as an external drive. I pretty much use it as a thumb drive that you unfortunately have to plug in. No bother.
As soon as you take it out of the box and plug it in, it works fine. I plugged it into the USB port on the front of the computer, and it just shows up as another drive on your computer. There is a collection of programs and drivers (if needed) that accompany the drive, but none of them are required to use the drive if you are using WinXP. If you would like to use the One Touch feature, you will need to install the program for that. This feature allows you to backup everything on your computer up 200GB or course. This can be done just by pushing the button on the front of the drive. Again, you only need the software if you plan to use this feature. I have yet to take the disc out of the sleeve.
One of the things I wish more people would mention in their reviews of electronic equipment is the power supply. For those of you who travel around the world, this drive comes with a dual voltage power supply rated at 100V - 240VAC. It does not come with a plug adaptor, so that may be something for you to keep in mind. Also, there is no case. The drive looks rather nice and you will want to keep it protected if you are traveling around with it.
The power cable is rather long so you won't have to worry about sitting right next to a power source. Also, the USB 2.0 cable is rather long as well. (I don't have my book with me at the moment so unfortunately I can't give you the actual measurement.) The big thing here is that you have room to work with.
As for the 3 items I've mentioned above, only one has not occurred. Yes the drive does get warm, but I would suspect all of these drives do that after a while. After about an hour and a half you'll notice that the drive is warm. It's not hot, just warm. I used it for a while in a room where the AC was set on Artic and it took a little while longer to get warm. Considering I'm currently in a rather warm climate, this is just something to note. Also, I was watching a movie from the drive. With that going, it still took about 90 minutes before getting noticeably warm. It gets warm like any other device would, but not so bad as to be concerned. I've had it on for as much as 3 hours and it was still, just warm.
The other issue is the noise. For the first month I hardly ever heard the drive spin. With all the reports about the noise, I actually thought something was wrong with mine because I didn't hear anything. Within the past week or so, I do hear a little something. It sounds like a drive working, so it's really nothing to be concerned about. Just like your computer, it will make a few sounds, but nothing out of the ordinary.
The bottom line is that this is a hard drive and I use it as such. It does a great job at what I want it to do--store music, videos, movies, documents, and photos. If you simply work it like a hard drive you should have no problems.
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