Maxtor One Touch III Mini Edition 80GB USB 2.0 Hard Drive

List Price: $194.88

Features:

• Maxtor OneTouch button - the easy way to make backup copies of your files
• Ideal backup and storage for carrying your digital portfolio with you
• Two levels of security with Maxtor DriveLock and Encryption to safeguard against unauthorized use
• Simple Maxtor user-interface for drive management, security and automated backup scheduling
• System Rollback - rolls back your PC settings to a better point in time while keeping data current

Customer Reviews:

A bad experience for me on all fronts [Posted on 2007-08-04]
I bought this hard drive from Staples to use as a backup drive for my Windows XP box. The hardware seemed fine (at first). The backup software's documentation and interface seemed passable (at first). Then I discovered that the backup software does not backup the c:\windows directory. I could not find any mention in the documentation of this limitation. Other Amazon reviews for this family of products enumerate other files that it fails to backup.

Once the backup finally did run and the software claimed it ran successfully, the Maxtor One-Touch status icon in the Windows status tray remained red, indicating a problem. When I right clicked the icon and requested the Backup Status, it displayed "Windows cannot access the specified device, path or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item".

Seagate's technical support website, which is where the Maxtor's support is located, is abysmal. Hard to even find this product, and when I finally did I could not find any discussion of this problem. When I spoke to them in person, they directed me to some cryptically-named files in the software's History directory that indicated which files weren't backed up. (Again, no mention of these files in the documentation.) But it still didn't solve the "appropriate permissions" problem. This problem is mentioned on several web sites, but there seems to be no reliable fix. None of the fixes mentioned on other sites worked for me.

Next, the user interface to the Maxtor software started acting up. The window would disappear everytime I clicked on it. Rebooting several times over the next couple days didn't solve it.

Finally, the drive indicated a hardware error and Windows claimed I would need to reformat it.

All of the above problems occurred during the first week. I didn't have time for any more grief from this thing and took it back to Staples. They have a great no-questions asked return policy as long as you return Electronics within 2 weeks.

I'm now trying the Iomega Silver Portable 100 GB Portable Drive, which comes with EMC Retrospect Express.

Won't shut off; terrible customer service [Posted on 2007-09-11]
I bought this hard drive three months ago. Three calls to Maxtor's technical "support" later, it still won't shut off so that I can remove it from my computer after I'm done backing up my data. In order to remove it safely, I have to restart my system. Sometimes the backup program occupies 98-99% of my computer's memory, making other applications freeze, and the process responsible for taking up all that memory can't be shut - even after restarting. Imagine a program that, once open, won't respond to a "quit" command or CTRL-ALT-DEL ... that's this drive.

And the "support" - if you like waiting on hold for 45 minutes to talk to someone in India whose English is, shall we say, rather idiosyncratic, then I strongly recommend that you buy something from Maxtor. As for me, in the future I'll take the risk that my computer gets stolen or burns up in a fire rather than spend another dollar on Maxtor's junk.

Think twice before buying this drive. [Posted on 2007-10-15]
I had the One Touch II Mini for a little over one year, then the USB port actually came loose and fell into the drive itself (just after the product came out of warranty of course, so no replacement) rendering it useless. Maxtor/Seagate "offered" to recover the data... for MINIMUM of $700!!

POS drive as far as I'm concerned, with horrible tech support to boot. Now I'm stuck with a paperweight that contains all my backup info. Stay away from this product if you're looking for a reliable drive. I'll never buy from them again.

maxtor usb drive [Posted on 2008-01-24]
here is a convenient way to store my photos...I gave it 4 stars because it needs 2 USB ports--I wish it required only one USB port

Good drive, bad software. [Posted on 2008-06-09]
Now this HD does what it is supposed to do, be a highly portable bucket for your data, that is way it gets 4 stars. Now I didn't use the one button backup feature or really any of the software features except the password drive lock and encrypt. When the Vista gods drop kicked my OS and I reloaded my system I plugged in my drive and low and behold the software locks the entire drive and is not accessible. This would normally be ok with internet access almost everywhere but the software is also not downloadable. I had to buy another one just to get the software to unlock my first dirve. The extra drive ended up being useful but a few "blue" words may have leaked out of my mouth. Word to the wise, backup the backup/utility software.

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