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Miniaturize your backup with the OneTouch 4 Mini from Maxtor

Posted by John Pastor • October 9, 2007 • Printer-friendly • Feed • Share

maxtor onetouch4mini Miniaturize your backup with the OneTouch 4 Mini from Maxtor

Maxtor has recently introduced their latest line of backup solutions for both the home and office user which includes three different products from the simplest, to the most full featured. Today, we're taking a look at the OneTouch 4 Mini, a travel friendly backup solution.

The design of the OneTouch 4 Mini is very simple and small. On the top is a brushed aluminum finish, on the sides a black plastic, and on the bottom, a rubber finish to keep it from flying off your desk. Maxtor offers this model in 80GB, 120GB, and 160GB capacities all running at 5400 RPM and with 8MB of cache. We received the 160GB unit for review and were eager to test it out. Included in the box is the drive, a USB 2.0 Y-cable, a quick start guide, and a Maxtor SafetyDrill Recovery CD, which we'll get to later.

Since Maxtor is owned by Seagate, the OneTouch 4 Mini is very similar to the Seagate FreeAgent Go we reviewed in May. Instead of including software to run applications off of the drive, the Mini includes the OneTouch Manager backup software that can be triggered through the button on the front of the unit.

The OneTouch Manager software allows you to sync files and folders between computers the minute you plug the drive in. It works seamlessly from our testing during the past few weeks. However we ran into a problem when mixing a XP and a Vista machine, which seems to be a software issue. This is probably due to the different file structure of the two operating systems.

Also included in the software is Maxtor SafetyDrillâ„¢ which creates a backup of your whole system and in the event of a failure, you can restore your data in minutes. We think this will come in handy to a lot of consumers in the near future. An encryption option is also available to keep things private and secured with a password.

As I mentioned earlier, the Seagate FreeAgent Go is similar to the OneTouch 4 Mini so speeds were the same. It took ~4 seconds to copy a 50MB file to and from the drive. A FireWire option would have been nice for faster transfers but USB 2.0 does the job just fine. The Y-cable was a bit of a hassle though; if your computer doesn't provide enough power, the drive will take up 2 USB ports and in some cases, that's all you might have available.

The Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini is available today from retailers and online starting at $99.99 USD.

Pros

  • Fast file transfers.
  • Lightweight and portable.
  • Easy to use software.
  • Cannot sync between XP and Vista

Cons

  • No FireWire option available.
  • Needs 2 USB ports if enough power is not supplied.

Final Verdict
4.5 out of 5 stars.



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