Conclusion:

The Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 1TB External Hard Drive is an excellent choice for adding a Terabyte of storage to your computer or to backup multiple computers. As the product line indicates, the OneTouch button makes it very simple to backup or sync your precious data to the drive. The design of the enclosure is simple, but rather functional when considering heat dissipation. It has an understated look that would make it fit in at home as well as at the office. While in use the drive is very quiet and never gets particularly hot.


One thing I would like to see changed is for an actual power switch to be used on the unit. Being able to turn it on/off with a switch would make it better suited for being used as a backup storage device for a few systems, so it could be powered down and moved to another system quickly. As mentioned earlier, another wishlist item would be to include eSATA connectivity. Since there is a SATA drive inside, the high transfer rates made possible with eSATA would make backups even quicker.

The software packaged with the drive is decent enough for most consumers, but the more advanced users may find it lacking. The SafetyDrill feature is nice, but still can not compete with Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image due to the rather minimal options.

A search on PriceGrabber for the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 1TB External Hard Drive returns a large number of results. The prices range from around $265 all the way up to about $375, which makes it competitively priced not only with other high capacity external drives, but also with bare 1TB drives!

With a massive amount of external storage and quiet operation I would recommend the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 1TB External Hard Drive to anyone looking for a great external storage solution.


Pros:

» Massive amount of external storage
» Firewire and USB 2.0 connectivity
» Simple backup management in as few as three clicks
» Includes a full suite of related applications
» Competitively priced
» 5 Year Warranty

Cons:

» No eSATA
» No power switch
» Software may be lacking for advanced users
» May need to download latest SafetyDrill application for use with new systems

Special thanks to Maxtor for providing the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 1TB External Hard Drive to Bigbruin.com for review!