Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 500 External Hard Drive

[Thab.]

Choosing the right external HDD can be tough. In order to sell, products such as the OneTouch 4 rely on their robust software bundle to help move off the shelf. People should be given a solid backup suite, especially given the price. This is exactly where Maxtor fell short, with their OneTouch 4 Plus.

You can read Nate's full review here and discuss it here!

In your article, you write that you don't know why there are two FireWire ports on the drive. Wow, what kind of tech review is that? With FireWire (and also with USB) you can daisy chain drives and devices together so that even with only one FireWire port on your computer, you can connect multiple FireWire drives to it because you can daisy chain them to the back of devices that have that extra FireWire port.

Your question is so odd that it makes me wonder the competency of the review.

 

[MAAD]

I was interested in getting a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 500 but after reading the review, I think I may just go with another drive. My main interest in this one was the software. I liked the idea of the one-touch backup capability and the feature that would allow me to easily recover after getting hit by malware or a virus. I was hit recently and it became such a hassle to deal with. Had I been able to revert back to a previous condition of my machine, it would have saved me much aggravation.

I'm thinking of just getting a drive that lacks the software and just getting better software elsewhere. I know this is somewhat straying from the original topic but could anyone point me in the direction of better software that would assist in the recovery of a machine infected with malware/virus? Which are the best ones?

Thanks.

MAAD

 

[Merlin]

I'm thinking of just getting a drive that lacks the software and just getting better software elsewhere. I know this is somewhat straying from the original topic but could anyone point me in the direction of better software that would assist in the recovery of a machine infected with malware/virus? Which are the best ones?

Thanks.

MAAD

One that most people like is:
http://www.acronis.com/

I've had MYBook and Maxtor and they both failed and I hear about WD Freeagent external failing as well.
Mainly it's the integrated software that has problems.
Just back up to another drive to be sure and burn really important photos and such to a DVD.

:techgage::techgage: Merlin :techgage::techgage:

 

[Unregistered]

Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 500GB External Hard Drive

Hi Guys... I've just purchased the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 500GB External Hard Drive...along with a brand new HP with Windows Vista. I know absolutely NOTHING about backing up files (except to a disk). I'd like to put my entire hardrive contents onto my new computer by first backing all files up onto the Onetouch external and then possibly reloading them all into my new HP from the external.
My first question is this:
1. What's the easiest way to do that using the one touch 4 plus?

2. Also, WHAT exactly is synching? Doesn't this just mean uploading or downloading your files?

3. The Onetouch book says in step 2 to "install the onetouch software. There's a note underneath that says "It is highly recommended that you copy the current contents of the onetouch 4 plus to your computer before proceeding. (huh?) Reference Seagate knowledge base article 4169 for more info".
What it the heck does that mean?
Is this info/instructions found on the software cd itself?

4. Safetydrill - WHAT are safety drill images? It states "Prior to creating a safetydrill image you should boot your system with the safetydrill CD to verify functionality: Note: Do not copy your safetydrill images into the encrypted folder. *Make sure the Drivepass Security is disabled on your onetouch prior to restoring from a safetydrill image"

All of the above is like chinese to me. ANY/ALL help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Sincerely,
CI (Computer illiterate)

 

[Kougar]

That sounds almost like you wish to image your drive, and then take that image and move it to a new computer.

Keep in mind that you can't really backup programs. Just like with the OS they must be installed to function properly on a new or different computer. You can however backup settings, profiles, or other aspects of the program if you know what files to make copies of.

#2 Syncing is primarily where you have two folders, one located on the external drive and one on the internal drive. Syncing makes sure both folders are always 100% identical... so if you transfer a word document to the folder on your desktop, then sync them the external drive will copy that word doc automatically to itself.

#3 It sounds like the software might be stored on the drive itself, OR that they are simply warning you to make a backup of any data you might have placed on the drive before installing their software onto the computer. I am not sure since Seagate's article page is not loading right now.

As far as Safetydrill, TechGage's review already covered that http://techgage.com/article/maxtor_onetouch_4_plus_500gb_external_hard_drive/3

 

[Unregistered]

Re: Maxtor 1 touch help

Thank you VERY much Cougar. You've been a tremendous help !
You explained synching...as well as other questions... very well.
My best!
D

 

[sagaliba]

3. The Onetouch book says in step 2 to "install the onetouch software. There's a note underneath that says "It is highly recommended that you copy the current contents of the onetouch 4 plus to your computer before proceeding. (huh?) Reference Seagate knowledge base article 4169 for more info".
What it the heck does that mean?

This may have something to do with the Trojan horse that was allegedly placed on some Maxtor/Seagate hard drives by Chinese subcontractor. (see http://www.computerworld.com/action...ArticleBasic&articleId=9046424&intsrc=hm_list)

I think they want you to copy the software onto your computer first and then run it (so the virus protection software can catch it) instead of running it directly from the drive's "aurorun."

To be safe, I will download the software from their website and use it, instead of using the one comes with the drive!

 

[Unregistered]

Internal disk:

Hello, does anyone know if it's possible to open the enclosure and use the internal disk if the enclosure fails? Or if I just don't want to use it as an external anymore?

Also, I'm using it with Linux just as a plain drive, not with the fancy software. Through Linux, is there a way to set the spin-down time? Currently, I just have a cron job that accesses it every minute to keep it spinning (apparently, spin-down and spin-up decreased disk lifetime.)

Can't get S.M.A.R.T. on the drive. Is this typical for externals?

Can the firmware work if I replaced the internal disk with a different one?

I have an ext3fs on the drive. After installing the ext2 driver on Windows, I couldn't access the filesystem. I think the drive exports it's partitions in a weird way so only Linux could read it. Anyone know about this?

Is there a way to disable all the extra firmware features and just use it as a plain drive? Thanks.

 

[Unregistered]

Probably not compatible with Leopard

The review doesn't deal with the Apple Mac world at all, so I thought I'd post my experiences. I have absolutely no use for the software suite, since I bought the drive to use with Apples Time Machine utility. I therefore didn't install any of the software, and I formatted the drive using Apple's Disk Utility. I bought the drive because I thought it was neat that I could connect using Firewire, and I'm running out of USB ports.

1. I found that the drive was quite noisy, constantly clicking and whirring, but I could put up with this background noise and would eventually get used to it. No drives are utterly silent.

2. The problem was that the hardware switch that's designed to interact with the software, and through that with the system, can't be deactivated. It insists on attempting to communicate with my Leopard system and Leopard interprets its signal as a shutdown request. I get a brief message asking whether I really want to shut down the system, but if I fail to click "cancel" the system just goes completely dead in the blink of an eye. There's no recovery, and the Mac doesn't even know that anything has crashed. It just shuts off.

I queried the technical support staff to see if there was some way to deactivate the switch, but apparently not. (I should mention that I'm not physically touching the switch at any time.)

Anyway, this is a rather serious incompatibility issue. I don't know what happens when I use the drive in USB mode, and haven't tried that yet. I definitely don't want to install the software, and generally consider the attempt to link a hardware switch with the OS to be a failure... a big failure. When I question Apple tech support they'd never heard of anyone experiencing this sort of odd shutdown behavior, and it took quite awhile to track it down to the Maxtor drive. I also might be able to use it connected to my Airport Extreme Base Station, via USB... but it's really incompatible with the Mac's Firewire port.

I don't know why one would ever need a physical backup switch like this anyway. It seems to be a gimmick, and it's obviously got a few kinks.

 

[Unregistered]

Addendum

I thought it fairly obvious that the reason for two firewire ports was to facilitate daisy chaining, and I don't know anything about firewire. The issue for me is that the drive just tries to be too "smart" and ends up stumbling over it's own foot. There's not a very good reason to have a switch that attempts to communicate with the operating system.

And the drive really is quite noisy. It's constantly klunking and bleating the whole time it's on. With all that mechanical stuff going on it's not surprising that it sends spurious signals, but it's also probably a longevity issue. Eventually that gearing will just wear out.

 

[Unregistered]

just say no to MAXTOR

I got the same "KNOPPIX file system can't be found" when trying to restore my hard drive. I called customer service and was told my original manufacture's disc must be corrupted (how do you corrupt the manufacture's disc is beyond my understanding) so I needed to download another copy. I downloaded their program twice (1.5 hours each time) and it did nothing. I happen to have two of these back up drives and neither disc works properly. This product is useless. Take the money you would have used to buy this and thrown it in the trash. You will come out ahead because you won't have to mess with this product in hopes of actually being able to restore your hard drive.


I know the back up is on the Maxtor drive as I can see lots of my files when I use "My Computer" to view the drive but I can't install the back up on my new laptop so it does me no good.

 

[Unregistered]

Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus and Windows Vista 64 Bit

Hi, I'm new to your site.
I purchased a maxtor OneTouch 4 plus and learned thanks to your review that it's not compatible with my Windows Vista 64 -bit software.
A scandal, and I'll be dealing with the jerks who recommended it, but what would you recommend as a back-up system for my HP laptop with Vista 64?

Any tips would be gratefully received

best regards

Bill in Switzerland

 

[Glider]

I purchased a maxtor OneTouch 4 plus and learned thanks to your review that it's not compatible with my Windows Vista 64 -bit software.

Isn't it? The software included will not, but mostly you don't need that...

if you are using 64 bit versions of XP or Vista, the external drive will function, but none of the included software will be of any use to you