eiapoce's Full Review: Seagate Maxtor OneTouch 4 500 GB USB Hard Drive
I won't go easy on this review. This unit lost all my data.
Package
The packaging is nice. You open the box and everything is protected by a sturdy yet flexible plastic dampener. Everywhere there are stickers claiming "SAVE YOUR LIFE" underlying the fact that you could backup your personal data on the device Well the installation is easy. Plug the power adapter, the usb cable and it's done.
You are given the change to install an addidional program for scheduled backups and diagnostics. There is a very nice white led on the bottom of the unit that bliks according to the status (Usage - Standby - Off).
My story
My story with this equipment is very sad. I had a trouble with a motherboard. After replacing that motherboard my raid was destroyed. I had to recover all my data with specialized auditing software and was scared to death. I decided to take this backup unit to save on this all the data and then to continue to install to a clean system all the stuff.
As the matter developed this showed to be a very stupid thing to do. I proceed with the backup procedure using a third hard drive from a additional computer. The whole process took 2 days (350Gb of data and the recovery software was'nt very fast). But in the end I did it. The data were now on the monolith ready, accessable and most important readable.
I formatted the RAID then knowing that all the data was safe. This was a error. When plugging the Onetouch it reported a corrupted file system. As you can't open the unit to recover the hard drive I had no other option than run scandisk from the windows disk utilities. After a night of work the utility claimed that the errors were recovered. In-fact the files were overwritten with random data and it were no longer my pictures mp3 or whatever.
I was angered enough. Fortunately I have optical backups for all the sensitive data. But for the rest it was unrecoverable, including iTunes music.
In the end after one additional day of work on the unit and a Re-Format its USB controller gave up and the disk was no longer accessible by any means.
I found at this forum and several other websites that the unit is unrealiable and selling this as backup solution is at least a hazard: http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=onetouch&thread.id=99
Since then the unit has been exchanged at the shop for another model by IoMega.
I strongly advice anyone to avoid this brand and this specific model since it is flawed by design: the controller is bugged.
NOTES. Someone rated "SOMEWHAT USEFUL" this review. I believe this is unfair. I have been sincerely writing about my NEGATIVE experience and now I feel on the other hand that some people (mostly advisors) feel compelled to promote only the "positive reviews" to increase the buying clicks. Consumers are lied all the time in commercials and Tv and paid websites, there is no need to start telling lies even here.
Note: I wish to anybody giving less than useful to have their backup erased on xmast night (as a present). Then maybe they'll see if this advice was somewhat helpful or not.
UPDATE
I got also a "unhelpful" Rating from a advisor who claims that "I am sure that had the unit been used as such, you wouldn't have had such unsavory results." It looks that this guy has'nt been reading the review. It is obvious to me that a FAULTY controller corrupts any kind on data on the disk and a "image backup" solution wouldn't have worked. he also accuses me of writing in a bad language, even if I couldn't find swearwords in the article (for such a product that deserves some and coming from me that's exceptional).
Please refer to the comments for the full story and the bashing. Also please consider the epinions guidelines for writing reviews wich I suppose I fully met, at least so long. It states at #1 "Describe your experience using this product." and that's exactly what I did here.
Maxtor OneTouch button ¿ the easy way to make backup copies of your files Simple Maxtor user interface for backup scheduling and restoring Auto Upd...More at Amazon Marketplace
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