Operation:

When the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 1TB External Hard Drive is powered on and connected to a computer the small translucent OneTouch button lights up. It is a bit of a nice surprise that the light isn't some blaring neon color that can be seen from another room. When the drive is active the light pulses on and off.


Although there is no power switch, there is an auto power down timer option in the software. Also, if you "safely remove" the drive in Windows, this will also power down the drive. To wake the drive up for use just reconnect the drive to the computer.

Software:

There is some software pre-installed on the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 1TB External Hard Drive. When you first plug in the drive the installation program will auto run and guide you through a quick installation. The installation requires a reboot of the system, and then it will put an icon in the taskbar.

The software that is installed is called Maxtor Manager, which is how you setup the OneTouch 4 Plus to operate the way you choose. The below left image shows the main tab of the software. It shows which drives are available, as well as some details about total capacity and the free space on the drive. Clicking on the settings button brings up some options shown in the below right image. The Test My Drive and Check for Software Update options will test the OneTouch 4 Plus to ensure it is working properly and check the Maxtor website for the newest version of Maxtor Manager.


You can choose what action the OneTouch button executes when you press it. Back Up is the default, but you can choose to Synchronize or execute an application.


The last device setting you can change is the Power Saving Mode. You can pick the length of inactivity required to put the device to into power-saving mode. It starts at 3 minutes, and can go up to 5 hours (or never if you want it always on).