Maxtor Onetouch Drives Q

Bri

Been eyeing up these Maxtor External Drives for quite some time now. They seem to get good reviews on Tom's HW etc.

Question is: If they're bought to free up a poor little 30GB laptop and store all those big music and photo directories - can they cope? Sure they can backup the files, but how well can they be accessed? Not knowing too much about this sorta thing I'm thinkin 7200rpm and a 8MB buffer isn't bad right?

Like if I had iTunes playing away, will there be noticeable difference in loading speed or playback - especially if its crossfading tracks?

Anything else I should know about them? Why does the 300GB version have a slower access speed (it's 5400 but its named 7000 for some reason) and 1/4 of the buffer size?

Thanks in advance.

Ciaran500

They can easily cope with anything like that. It will appear as just another HDD in "My computer" and you shouldn't notice much difference (if any) difference in performance compared to your laptop hdd. It might be slighlty limited by the usb or firewire.


7200rpm and an 8meg cache is the fastest drive available before you go on to raptors (10,000rpm).


The speed difference could be to keep prices lower or it might be to make space for the extra disk space.

Bri

Good to hear.

Presumably its plug n play or whatever they call it these days? Like I can easily have it popped out until I wanna play music or whatever and XP can pick it up in a few seconds just like a zip drive, iPod, etc connected through a USB2 card?

I don't get why you said "It might be slighlty limited by the usb or firewire" - thought it was the same as any other HD? Sorry just confused.

Mutant_Fruit

for regular usage, you will notice very little difference between 5400 and 7200. By regular usage i mean playing mp3's, encoding mp3's/divx's, browsing, and word processing.

You will notice a difference in load times in between game levels etc with the slower RPM. The advantage of 5400rpm drives is that they are cooler, and so require less cooling.

Bri

Presumably this won't mean the life of the HD is significantly less if it works a wee bit faster?

Ciaran500

Bri wrote:

I don't get why you said "It might be slighlty limited by the usb or firewire" - thought it was the same as any other HD? Sorry just confused.

I added that in the edit and forgot to change the rest of the post, what i meant was the the usb can accept a max of 480mb/s but the HDD might runn faster than that, so it would be limited by the usb speeds.

Ciaran500

The heat difference between 7200 and 5400 shouldn't reduce the HDD life noticebly.

Yep, it will be plug and play.

Bri

Again, thanks for the help. I'll get saving...

whosurpaddy

ciaran is right the hard disk speed wont be the limiting factor, how you access it will. i can never remember which one out of usb 2/firewire is slightly faster but both should cope fine. id reccommend usb2 for the simple reason that 99% of pc's have some form of usb port, firewire hasnt reached anywhere near that saturation yet.

the only probs ive encountered when using external hdd's is that if you run things off em for hours, the odd time the device wont "stop" and you end up rebooting, small price to par tbh.

carrotcake

i was in the same situation: laptop with 30gb, but needed more for video editing/burning dvds. i got the drive you linked to (from komplett as well), linked it by usb 2.0 and it's actually faster than the 30gb drive in the laptop. authoring a dvd (creating the vob files etc before burning) takes 25 minutes on the internal drive, 15 on the external. the results speak for themselves!

i haven't noticed any negative effects regards regular access (programs/videos/mp3s)

Bri

whosurpaddy: I get that sometimes on the internal drive so no biggie.
Carrotcake: Great to hear! Thanks!

Looks like I'll have to take up my sole laptop card space with a USB2 card and be forced into buying a USB Wireless dongle-thingy for the back! There's no other option is there - like expanding the card-capacity of a laptop...even if it makes it less mobile?!

thesteve

I bought the 250 GB usb/firewire model as soon as it came out and it has been my best IT related purchase yet... I have 150 GB of mp3's - all legally ripped of course - and every time we've a party or anything I let a playlist play a load of them through the stereo.....

whosurpaddy

thesteve wrote:

I have 150 GB of mp3's -

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

my god. does that much music exist? whats your average filesize just out of curiousity?

thesteve

ok, just checked the properties (see attached) and its only 144GB..... average file size is around 5MB I'd say...

delly

That sure is a lot of music..........brother legoman!!

ColmC

got the 300gig version, works fine, only used for mp3' and divx storage at the moment. just plug it in.

gobby

Anybody know what size these drives are? Not that I can afford one or anything. Anyone got a pic of one with something like a cd in the backround for comparison?

ColmC

its basically a normal big hd with a case & fan

carrotcake

click the link at the top of the page. it'll give you the dimensions

carbsy

Also they are very heavy!

Bri

This could be a crazy question but can these HDs (or any) be accessed via Wireless? I dunno if I'm dreaming or if its possible...but it would be sweet if so. This would be to solve my problem of lack of connectivity, with only one notebook card space.

Anyone help someone out of his depth?!

Ciaran500

You would have to access it wirelesly through another pc. Just share the whole HDD.

Bri

Can you explain that a bit?! It's an external HD in theory. Do I need 2 PCs to get this to work?

Sorry!

Ciaran500

Sorry, you would have to have another pc to access the HDD and send it over wireless to the laptop. e.g. you could plug the HDD into a pc upstairs and share the whole HDD over the wireless network. Then just look at your new hdd from the other pc.


But, by the sounds of it you were talking about having the hdd send it wirelesely to the laptop without hooking it up to any pc. I don't think this is possible, but I may be wrong.

Bri

That's what I thought you'd say. Ah well!

Thanks.

Lump

I have the drive, Have a look at the pic attached, it might give you and Idea of the size, the drive gives off a fair bit of heat. Connects either on Firewire, USB or USB 2.0 I use firewire, just a matter of pluging it in. You only need the software if you want to use the One touch stuff, IE if you press the button on the front of the drive, it will automatically back up pre-defined files/folders etc.

http://members.boards.ie/lump/S2010001.JPG
http://members.boards.ie/lump/S2010002.JPG


John

Bri

Lump wrote:

I have the drive, Have a look at the pic attached, it might give you and Idea of the size, the drive gives off a fair bit of heat. Connects either on Firewire, USB or USB 2.0 I use firewire, just a matter of pluging it in. You only need the software if you want to use the One touch stuff, IE if you press the button on the front of the drive, it will automatically back up pre-defined files/folders etc.

http://members.boards.ie/lump/S2010001.JPG
http://members.boards.ie/lump/S2010002.JPG


John

That's actually great to see - all in all it looks quite neat and I def. think I'm gonna buy one now.

Thanks again!

Lump

HE he, it doesn't look too neat there, with all the other rubbish around it, but it is. All it is, is a metal box on a stand.


John

bricks

It hardly makes a sound and its nice and fast.
It also seems to have its own internal power saving so it spins down when not in use for a long time.
As for the wireless option not a chance I'm afraid, unless anyone knows different.

Bri

Great amount of positive feedback about this product

Nukem

Maybe stupid question but can u run it as a live drive for games and stuff (presume thats no worries) or does it have restrictions of some sort.

Clinical Waste

Or you could add this to your wireless network, hook the Maxtor to it and then no PC has to be on to access it (except of course the PC you are using at the time to access it )

http://www.netgear.com/promotions/WGT634U.php


http://www.netgear.com/products/prod_details.php?prodID=242&view=

Civilian_Target

Legoman: Any chance I could plug that hard disk into my computer for a while , assuming that you like your Rock....

the1andonly1

what actual speeds does anyone get using usb 2.0? I know the maximum is 480 Mbs, but on my external drive i get nothing like that, about 30MBs, which is only 240Mbs

Ciaran500

USB speed is 480mbs bursts. I've no idea how this translates to continues speeds but it can't maintain 480mbs. Firewire is 400mbs continues.