Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus drives: HW works, SW does not
A word of warning for anyone evaluting Maxtor's OneTouch 4 Plus external drives as a backup solution: the drive is good, but their software is useless if you are using Leopard.
Once you repartition it (factory format is MBR/NTFS) as GUID/HFS+, the hardware works fine and at 7200RPM is a fast drive. However, if you are running Leopard, that's all you are getting for your money: a fast, compact external 1TB USB2/FW400 drive. The included Maxtor Manager software cannot recognize the drive when used on this O.S., so forget using the manufacturer's diagnostic tools, the passwording and/or encryption features or even configuring the front One Touch button for automatic execution.
I have been in a neverending round of exchanges with Maxtor/Seagate Customer Support for over three weeks and it has been a litany of excuses: you didn't format it right, drive journaling is not supported (!!!), you have "conflicting devices", etc. That last one was particularly amusing. On the last exchange, the "technical specialist" was fairly gushing about how good Time Machine is ("...which is hands down the best backup solution in the computing world...") just so I'd overlook the obvious fact that their software is useless on the Leopard platform. Thanks, but I'd rather have a rotating set of four bootable clones spread out on two drives, with smart updating via SuperDuper.
Update: Just received the final email reply from Maxtor's support: "call the phone no. below, we can't help you via the email/web interface anymore". So there....
Cheers,
JMC
(still sore after the MobileMess)
Once you repartition it (factory format is MBR/NTFS) as GUID/HFS+, the hardware works fine and at 7200RPM is a fast drive. However, if you are running Leopard, that's all you are getting for your money: a fast, compact external 1TB USB2/FW400 drive. The included Maxtor Manager software cannot recognize the drive when used on this O.S., so forget using the manufacturer's diagnostic tools, the passwording and/or encryption features or even configuring the front One Touch button for automatic execution.
I have been in a neverending round of exchanges with Maxtor/Seagate Customer Support for over three weeks and it has been a litany of excuses: you didn't format it right, drive journaling is not supported (!!!), you have "conflicting devices", etc. That last one was particularly amusing. On the last exchange, the "technical specialist" was fairly gushing about how good Time Machine is ("...which is hands down the best backup solution in the computing world...") just so I'd overlook the obvious fact that their software is useless on the Leopard platform. Thanks, but I'd rather have a rotating set of four bootable clones spread out on two drives, with smart updating via SuperDuper.
Update: Just received the final email reply from Maxtor's support: "call the phone no. below, we can't help you via the email/web interface anymore". So there....
Cheers,
JMC
(still sore after the MobileMess)
PowerBook G4 15/1.25GHz, MacBook Pro 15/2.5GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.3)
