BIOS: Technology Means Business

Maxtor's fourth generation external hard disk, the OneTouch II, builds on the one-touch concept and allows you to initiate backups at the touch of a button. It also comes with a DriveLock security feature which password protects the contents of the drive once it is powered down. The 7200rpm drive (140x220x41mm, 1.38kg) is available with a capacity of either 200GB (Best Current Price: £105 ex. VAT) or 300GB (Best Current Price: £169 ex. VAT), has a 16MB cache, as well as average seek time of 9ms. To save you from doing the math, 300GB is enough space for around 21 hours of video, 250000 photos or an amazing 5000 hours of MP3 audio.

The drive connects to your Windows or Mac OS-based computer via either FireWire 400 or USB 2.0, and come with Dantz's excellent Retrospect software for easy backup. Backing up and restoring data is made easy thanks largely to the drive's support for historical backup copies. This technology allows you to restore your entire system to its backed-up status from yesterday, two days ago or even two weeks ago. The drive can also self-manage its storage space and delete older backup versions as the drive fills up.

Maxtor's OneTouch II drive is an ideal external hard disk drive for creative professionals, digital content creators and general computer power users. Thanks to the inclusion of both USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 ports, the drive delivers up to 480Mbit/s data transfer rates to quickly transfer and store high-resolution graphics, digital audio/video, heavy multimedia files, photos and data. It comes with FAT32 formatting, which we changed to NTFS, yielding 279GB of usable data space.

Although the drive comes with dual interfaces, there's also a FireWire 800 version of the drive which offers 800Mbit/s transfer rates. The other great feature of the drive is that is has no complex menus or commands, and no in-depth technical knowledge is required to set it up and get the best from it. Just plug it in using either of the supplied cables, install the supplied driver software and backup software (optional), and you're then ready to start transferring files. You can even redefine the front-mounted backlit button to launch a program of your choosing.

Maxtor's OneTouch II drive is one of the highest performing FireWire external drives on the market today. If you opt for the FireWire 800 model you'll get twice the bandwidth of FireWire 400 and up to 66 times the speed of USB 1.1. Coupling the interface with the OneTouch II's 300GB capacity, 7200rpm spin speed and 16MB buffer (it's actually a Maxtor 3.5-inch DiamondMax 10 drive), you can transfer and store your digital content at impressive speeds.

The drive also sports an attractive silver finish with blue LED and cool operation, so you can either stack multiple drives or position them upright to save desktop space. Maxtor even supplies a plastic stand to support the drive, although we were disappointed the stand didn't affix firmly to the drive - lift the drive and it detaches from the stand. Although there's no built-in shock protection, the drive is robust enough to take everyday knocks and bumps.

With every OneTouch II drive you get a copy of Maxtor's DriveLock for added security and an exclusive version of EMC Dantz Retrospect Express HD software for simple backup and restores. The drive also features a simple user-friendly interface for easy set up and navigation. Using the FireWire interface, the OneTouch II drive is fully bootable on a Mac computer running OS X system software. Unfortunately, the same doesn't apply to PCs running Windows. Nevertheless, the OneTouch II is a robust drive that actually delivers on its promise of ease of use. It's a sensible investment in protecting your data, and the best single-system backup solution we've yet seen. [9]