Maxtor's 4th Generation of External Drives - OneTouch 4

Maxtor has a new line of external hard drives that use our favorite interface, USB 2.0. You can get Maxtor OneTouch 4 drives in capacities of 250GB, 500GB, and 750GB. The new Maxtor drives are very similar to the Seagate FreeAgent Pro and Simpletech drives we reviewed before. The drives inside the enclosures are 7200rpm units with 16MB buffer, except the Mini which uses 5400 rpm drives with 8MB cache. The drives all use the ATA interface rather than the more popular Serial ATA.

You will also be able to buy OneTouch 4 Plus drives in the same capacities, with a 1TB drive coming in October. The difference in the OneTouch 4 and the OneTouch 4 Plus is that the latter has data encryption to keep sensitive personal or business info secure. Maxtor also has a new OneTouch Mini that is powered from the USB bus and is available in capacities of 80GB, 120GB, and 160GB. The svelte Mini only measures 4.9” x .59” x 3.22” and weighs 5.9 ounces. All the drives are Mac and PC compatible.