Whacked1,
I have the Maxtor OneTouch II a little over a year. I have it partitioned into two drives - a backup boot drive of about 100 GB and a data drive for the other 200 GB. I've only experienced a few problems with it. It gets very hot if it's running constantly for a long period of time so I contacted Maxtor. They said I shouldn't run it continuously for more than about 5 hours without giving it a rest. I have it set to sleep when it's inactive so I'm not having a heating problem now, but that, of course, defeats my boot drive purpose.
The second problem is related to it occasionally not being recognized correctly and not mounting on the desktop. But I've figured out the problem and solution. The Maxtor is connected to my external EZQuest drive (my boot drive) via firewire. To ensure that the Maxtor is recognized when the EZQuest boots, I have to first turn on the Maxtor and then wait until I can feel (with my hand) that it has warmed up sufficiently (it vibrates slightly) and then I can turn on my EZQuest. After that has warmed up, I turn on my Mini. I think the extra warm-up time is necessary because my apartment is cold in the winter and the drives seem to be affected by the cold as much as I am. The fan on the EZQuest drive groans at startup, and the EZQuest tech support told me to loosen the fan (that worked, although it still groans a little on very cold days).
I don't use the button, but I just tried it to see if it works and it doesn't.
Claire
Mac Mini PPC Mac OS X (10.4.8) Maxtor One Touch II 300 GB HD, LG DVD Drive, EZQuest 120 GB HD; 3 ipods