MAXTOR ONETOUCH 4 MINI (250GB)

Storage with the Right Touch



Small enough to fit inside a coat or suit pocket, this Maxtor drive has received a nicespeed boost (from 5,400 to 7,200 rpm) over last year's Editors'Choice 160GB model. Suitable for transporting and syncing data between multiple machines, the OneTouch 4 Mini stands out from its rivals. Although its disaster recovery is only for Windows XP or Vista users with NTFS-formatted drives, the OneTouch 4 Mini is one of the best portable drives available, and it once again earns our Editors' Choice.

This drive is relatively small at 0.6 by 4.9 by 3.2 inches (HWD). Its brushed-aluminium top, thick plastic sides, and rubberized bottom convey a sense of security. Maxtor's One Touch backup software is installed on the drive itself and gives you the option to back up or synch an entire drive or specific folders. You can't, however, synch a Windows Vista and a Windows XP PC. You also get DrivePass, a powerful security utility with AES 256-bit encryption. The SafetyDrill utility creates an image of your PC's drive and backs it up to the OneTouch 4 Mini-but it is still limited to NTFS drives.




The OneTouch 4 Mini is also a speedy drive, taking only 49 seconds to back up our 1.22GB test folder via drag-and-drop and 50 seconds using the OneTouch software. These times, a nearly identical to those of the previous OneTouch 4 Mini, remain impressive. Costing about $20 less than competing drives with the same capacity, this device is still the hard drive to beat.-Brian K. Neal

PC Magazine November 2008

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