Maxtor OneTouch - RUN AWAY FROM THIS PRODUCT

[jc]

unless you don't really need the data that you are backing up.

This drive has caused me headache after headache. I just built a new system
and used this drive to back up some files that I really needed to keep. I
built my new machine and was able to get files off of the OneTouch no
problem. I then identified a problem with the way I had installed XP and
decided to install again. Having done so my first attempt to access this
drive resulted in the horrifying message that "drive F: is not formatted.
Would you like to format it now?"

I've attempted uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers to no avail. I
then took the OneTouch and plugged it into a laptop that I KNEW had no
problems with this drive from previous experience. Same thing.
Unformatted. Disk Administrator shows it as a "raw partition".

I have 7200rpm Maxtor drives in my desktop machine, and they are rock solid.
The OneTouch is a product that Maxtor did not get right. I can't wait to
see what product support has to say. I'm afraid either way my data is lost
forever.

 

[Joe Hayes]

Sounds like user error to me. Hard drives just don't format themselves.

 

[CJT]

unless you don't really need the data that you are backing up.

This drive has caused me headache after headache. I just built a new system
and used this drive to back up some files that I really needed to keep. I
built my new machine and was able to get files off of the OneTouch no
problem. I then identified a problem with the way I had installed XP and
decided to install again. Having done so my first attempt to access this
drive resulted in the horrifying message that "drive F: is not formatted.
Would you like to format it now?"

I've attempted uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers to no avail. I
then took the OneTouch and plugged it into a laptop that I KNEW had no
problems with this drive from previous experience. Same thing.
Unformatted. Disk Administrator shows it as a "raw partition".

I have 7200rpm Maxtor drives in my desktop machine, and they are rock solid.
The OneTouch is a product that Maxtor did not get right. I can't wait to
see what product support has to say. I'm afraid either way my data is lost
forever.

I think there's just a regular drive inside the box, so you might be
able to remove it and connect it to your PC's internal controller. I'd
probably see whether it can be made to work as-is first, though.

 

[jc]

No, it's not like it's formatted, it's like it's NEVER been formatted. It
says RAW in Disk Administrator. If I'd formatted the drive accidentally
then it wouldn't be telling me that it needed formatting would it? It was
previously NTFS when it was functional.

 

[jc]

Yeah, I'm going to wait and see what Maxtor says when I call their support
line tomorrow.

2 things are true though:
1 - it's past any refundability, so I'm stuck with it
2 - I'll never trust it with data gain

That said, ripping it apart to see if the drive can be made to work alone
may be the final solution.

John
--

 

[Mr. Grinch]

This drive has caused me headache after headache. I just built a new
system and used this drive to back up some files that I really needed
to keep. I built my new machine and was able to get files off of the
OneTouch no problem. I then identified a problem with the way I had
installed XP and decided to install again. Having done so my first
attempt to access this drive resulted in the horrifying message that
"drive F: is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?"

I've attempted uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers to no avail.
I then took the OneTouch and plugged it into a laptop that I KNEW had
no problems with this drive from previous experience. Same thing.
Unformatted. Disk Administrator shows it as a "raw partition".

Does the OneTouch really need drivers installed if all you want is a drive
letter to show up? I thought the drivers were strictly for the onetouch
backup program.

I thought it would be like any other USB/Firewire drive under 2000/XP.
Plug it in and see a drive letter, no need to install drivers.

I've read all the reviews of the various OneTouch drives on Amazon and it
seems people either love or hate the drive. About half of the people seem
to have run into dead or broken hardware and I'm wondering if that's what
happened to yours as well.

I was thinking of getting the 300GB one myself. I've got three maxtor ATA
drives, one 40GB and two 160GB, hanging off a Promise Ultra133, and no
problems at all with them.

 

[Paul Atreides]

Does the OneTouch really need drivers installed if all you want is a drive
letter to show up? I thought the drivers were strictly for the onetouch
backup program.

Hi,

No program or driver is necessary unless you want to change the sleep
delay or use the Firewire interface.

I thought it would be like any other USB/Firewire drive under 2000/XP.
Plug it in and see a drive letter, no need to install drivers.

Under W2K, these disks (windows) ask for the Firewire driver on the CD-
ROM.

I've read all the reviews of the various OneTouch drives on Amazon and it
seems people either love or hate the drive. About half of the people seem
to have run into dead or broken hardware and I'm wondering if that's what
happened to yours as well.

We use 4 x 250 GB external "One Touch" on a... backup server since last
year and no problem so far.

 

[David Chien]

No problems here with one hooked up to backup a Mac OS X system. Works
fine, does the job automatically, and even that latests PC World/Mag?
review had the Maxtor ranked up at 4 out of 5 stars or something like that.

As for the blank partition, I'd lean towards either accidentally
formatting the drive, virus/trojan formatting the drive, or something
like that. All the Maxtor is is a standard IDE HD in a USB or combo box
plus a button on front that sends a signal down the IDE cable to the
computer to start something. that's it. Nothing special, and nothing
inside that'll make the HD go blank by itself (unless you got a bad drive).

Here, you may want to contact Ontrack disk recovery services if you
can't see anything on the raw HD.

 

[David Chien]

Oh, and yet another reason to backup PCs to a non-erasable media, such
as CD-R discs with Symantec Ghost....

 

[CJT]

Oh, and yet another reason to backup PCs to a non-erasable media, such
as CD-R discs with Symantec Ghost....

Backing up 200 GB to CDs gets old fast.

 

[Neil Maxwell]

Does the OneTouch really need drivers installed if all you want is a drive
letter to show up? I thought the drivers were strictly for the onetouch
backup program.

I thought it would be like any other USB/Firewire drive under 2000/XP.
Plug it in and see a drive letter, no need to install drivers.

I have a OneTouch sitting on my desk now, connected to USB2, and it
doesn't need anything special, but I don't use their software. I use
a combination of True Image 7 and Second Copy, and have not had a
problem with it in the 3 months I've used it. I did some pretty
extensive verifications on it when I first fired it up, though.

This one had data verification turned on out of the box - it would
automatically verify data written to it until the power cycled 10
times. I left it on for the first 5 test runs, but it doubled the
backup times, of course, so I cycled it on through and continued
testing.


Neil Maxwell - I don't speak for my employer

 

[Mr. Grinch]

We use 4 x 250 GB external "One Touch" on a... backup server since
last year and no problem so far.

Thanks for the info! Just curious, are you using Firewire or USB for your
backup server OneTouch drives?

I've got an Adaptec DuoConnect card which has both Firewire and USB ports,
running under Windows Server 2003. PC is a Dual P3-800, 1GB RAM, USB 1.1
on the motherboard, which is why I got the USB 2.0 card, for faster
transfers to a Zen Xtra 60GB mp3 player. I'm using the drivers that come
with Server 2003... the Adaptec ones apparently don't work in dual cpu
machines.

USB 2.0 is a great improvement over 1.1 transfer speeds, but does seem to
generate a lot of CPU load. I've heard that Firewire uses less CPU but has
higher sustained transfer rates. I'd get the drive that supports both but
I'd probably want to use Firewire on my PC.

 

[Mr. Grinch]

I have a OneTouch sitting on my desk now, connected to USB2, and it
doesn't need anything special, but I don't use their software. I use
a combination of True Image 7 and Second Copy, and have not had a
problem with it in the 3 months I've used it. I did some pretty
extensive verifications on it when I first fired it up, though.

This one had data verification turned on out of the box - it would
automatically verify data written to it until the power cycled 10
times. I left it on for the first 5 test runs, but it doubled the
backup times, of course, so I cycled it on through and continued
testing.

Thanks for the info! That's good to know. I was wondering why some people
reported that the drive ran slower initially. Now I understand why. They
are sort of forcing drive testing for the initial drive usage. I was
thinking if I do get one of these drives, I'll want to test it to full
capacity. I guess I can use their method or come up with my own.

 

[Mr. Grinch]

I have a OneTouch sitting on my desk now, connected to USB2, and it
doesn't need anything special, but I don't use their software. I use
a combination of True Image 7 and Second Copy, and have not had a
problem with it in the 3 months I've used it. I did some pretty
extensive verifications on it when I first fired it up, though.

Just curious, have you compared True Image to other imaging apps like Ghost
or Drive Image? I'm a long time Ghost user but have found some problems
with something I want to do, creating bootable DVDs for image restore.
It's been a long time since I tried out any of the other imaging apps and
was just curious if you had any comments about True Image.

As far as syncing data goes, Second Copy looks nice and easy to use. But
I've been writing scripts for Robocopy too long to give it up now ;-).
It's great if you're looking for something thats reliable and free and
don't mind a bit of scripting.

Thanks again for the info.

 

[Neil Maxwell]

Just curious, have you compared True Image to other imaging apps like Ghost
or Drive Image? I'm a long time Ghost user but have found some problems
with something I want to do, creating bootable DVDs for image restore.
It's been a long time since I tried out any of the other imaging apps and
was just curious if you had any comments about True Image.

I like True Image because it's much easier to deal with than Ghost. I
only tested Ghost a little, and it was enough of a pain in the butt
that I didn't follow up on it, since TI7 was working well for me. TI7
is very easy, user friendly, and flexible. Good incremental backups,
easy browsing of image files, decent automation, and so on.

I haven't tried a bootable DVD, but bootable CDs (booting to some
Linux variant) have worked fine for me on everything but a Sony VAIO
laptop. Nice recognition of all the stuff I've thrown at it,
including various USB2, FW, and network cards, both wireless and
wired, but most of the hardware is not on the bleeding edge.

As far as syncing data goes, Second Copy looks nice and easy to use. But
I've been writing scripts for Robocopy too long to give it up now ;-).
It's great if you're looking for something thats reliable and free and
don't mind a bit of scripting.

Second Copy has worked nicely for me. Again, ease of use is
important, as I support a wide variety of folks with a wide variety of
skills. Robocopy sounds good, but I don't want to spend much time
learning the scripting. I'm trying to free myself from digital
slavery ;-)


Neil Maxwell - I don't speak for my employer

 

[Neil Maxwell]

Backing up 200 GB to CDs gets old fast.

I'd look at an additional HD (that is, making 2 images on separate
HDs). A bit of extra money, but once the data's gone, it's easy to
justify an extra $100 or so.


Neil Maxwell - I don't speak for my employer

 

[Mr. Grinch]

I like True Image because it's much easier to deal with than Ghost. I
only tested Ghost a little, and it was enough of a pain in the butt
that I didn't follow up on it, since TI7 was working well for me. TI7
is very easy, user friendly, and flexible. Good incremental backups,
easy browsing of image files, decent automation, and so on.

Thanks again for sharing this info. I'm going to have to give True Image a
try. Ghost 2003 / 8 Corproate does have a number of "bugs" or "features"
that have hampered it over the years in various situations. I'm ready to
give something else a whirl. I'll have to take a closer look at Second
Copy too. Sometimes it's no fun being the only person who knows how to
write a script, especially if it's one everyone ends up using.

(this close to hitting the order button for a OneTouch 300GB on maxtor.com)

 

[Neil Maxwell]

Thanks again for sharing this info. I'm going to have to give True Image a
try. Ghost 2003 / 8 Corproate does have a number of "bugs" or "features"
that have hampered it over the years in various situations. I'm ready to
give something else a whirl. I'll have to take a closer look at Second
Copy too. Sometimes it's no fun being the only person who knows how to
write a script, especially if it's one everyone ends up using.

One bug I've seen on TI7 is on an XP laptop connected to my network
thru an 802.11g card. Imaging is slow, which is to be expected, but
every now and then it will get an "exception error" and will sit in
the notification area of the taskbar for days, hung up, not doing any
scheduled backups. There's a little "!" on the icon, but the laptop
user doesn't pay attention to such minor details, so I have to check
it every few days. I thought it happened when the PC the image drive
lives on was off, but recent tests show that's not the case. I
haven't contacted their tech support about it yet.

It needs to be more aggressive about notifying the user of errors, as
once you click the "ok" button, it's back to normal.

All the hardwired connections have been OK on a couple of different
networks.

(this close to hitting the order button for a OneTouch 300GB on maxtor.com)

I've been happy with mine, but haven't tried the built-in software. I
built a cheap USB2 external from a drive and enclosure, and the
inexpensive enclosure is much, much louder than the Maxtor. I can't
hear the Maxtor at all; it's sitting a few feet from me.


Neil Maxwell - I don't speak for my employer