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Product Description

You and your content belong together. Weighing less than 6 ounces, the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini makes it easy to confidently carry your up-to-date portfolio in your pocket. This full-featured, portable backup and storage solution now includes Maxtor SafetyDrill for complete recovery of your PC hard drives contents in case of a system crash or virus/spyware attack. A simple user interface makes automated backup scheduling, specific file restoration, and security a snap. You can automatically sync data on multiple computers so you always have your latest files handy.To safeguard against unauthorized use, Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini comes with both data encryption and Maxtor DrivePass.Its easy to install - just plug the drives USB cable into an available port on your PC or Mac and there is no additional power needed, so youre off and running!

Customer Reviews:

• These drives are terrible!!
  I bought two of these 250 mb drives 2 months ago. Not only do they hog 2 USB ports, but the USBs don't generate enough power to run them. I will be tossing them out, taking the loss and will buy 2 WD FreeAgent drives. Don't waste your money on this junk!!...more info
• Crash with no reason
  Bought this HD about 3 months ago. I didn't use it until recently I was trying to recover some old files. I plugged it in and it started beeping. It can't even detect the DH anymore. It is broken, with no reason. Will never ever buy it again....more info
• Drive failed in less than a week
  Avoid this product. I bought one. It worked great for a several days and then never worked again. It wasn't mishandled or dropped it's just a crummy product. I have a 20GB portable 'Pockey' drive that must be about eight-years old and that thing has seen a world of hard use and it still works. ...more info
• Problems with drive
  The drive is beautiful, nice, small, and wonderful. The data is still on mine, but I cannot get the drive to be recognized on Win XP. Maxtor's knowledge base has not helpful. I am not the only one with this problem, please do a search engine search of the drive not being recognized. Thanks. I will go from a different vendor from now on until Maxtor does a better job with their website on detailing how to fix. "Turn off computer; restart" advice...more info
• Excellent Drive!!
  Excellent drive, had no problems and very reliable. I backup all my files onto this drive. Small enough to fit in my pocket so no bulky drives have to carry around....more info
• Solid portable drive. Convenient for backups and travel.
  This was a good bargain at just around $125 for 320GB at the time of purchase. It's small but looks and feels solid. I didn't install the included software and use it mainly for creating backup images with Acronis. I've backed up a desktop and two laptops and there's still plenty of space for other files. My PCs running XP recognized the drive immediately (it worked fine with just one of the dual-prong USB plugged in - the one marked power/data vs. just data) and an 80GB backup took about 30 minutes; the drive stayed cool and quiet. I use it often to explore the images when away from home and no problems so far. I'll probably buy another if the price hovers around the $125-$140 range. ...more info
• Both my PC's stopped recognizing
  I loved this unit at first. Actually bought a 2nd one, regrettably. After about 3 months both of my PC's stopped recognizing these units thus rendering them inoperable. Lost all information.
  No matter what you do, back up info on a 2nd medium (which fortunately I did.)
  ...more info
• Worst external HD I've ever purchased.
  I've had 2 of these go bad withing 3 weeks. 35GB of data, kapuut, again!!! I'll never buy another Maxtor product....more info
• Broke and ate my backup data
  I used one less than ten times, and it ate my data after getting the click of death. Fortunately, I had the data elsewhere and was able to restore it, but this is the second Maxtor I've had that has failed. I've switched to other brands and have not had any failures.
  ...more info
• Great drive
  The drive hardware is excellent.
  
  The included software is confusing at first. You would think clicking the "Backup" tab and seting up your daily backups is what you want, however that only backs up "My Documents", it does not do a full backup of your C drive and thus won't restore your hard drive if it crashes. The real backup program, Safety Drill, is hiding under the "Safety" tab. It does a full backup of your C drive so that if you ever need to you can boot on the included CD to format and restore the C drive. This is all in the manual, but who reads that until disaster strikes and you are horrified to find out the backup you thought you had is only the documents folder. Maxtor should make the installer launch Safety Drill right after the installation so you'll do a full backup right at the start. Once you understand the software, Safety Drill is wonderful. It backed up my 120GB C drive fairly quickly and compressed the 25GB contents into a 19GB file). You can define a frequency in days to have it do automatic drive backups.
  
  The "Backup" tab is not as useful. It will backup "My Documents" but not much else. For example your e-mails will not be backed up. This pretty much forces you to do full backups with Safety Drill more frequently than you would like. The "Sync" tab has the same limitations as "Backup" so neither is of much use.
  
  Overall it's a great drive and the included Safety Drill program works great. The drive is accessible like any other hard drive so you can create personal folders on it and use it as you please without affecting backups stored on the drive. I put this to use by disabling "Backup" and copying "C:\Documents and Settings" over to the OneTouch. I then use the PowerToy utility "SyncToy" running on a schedule to sync the files thereby giving me a backup.
  
  
  3/4/2009 UPDATE: The drive has been going for almost a year now and has been a good one. It gets lots of use with SyncToy running every night to sync the files with my C drive. I also backup my entire hard drive to it monthly. I'm still very happy with it. ...more info
• (backup of hidden files and folders is not supported) -> WTF!!??
  Elaboration:
  MAXTOR: WHEN VIEWING BACK UP LOG I GET THIS MSG->
  'Not Supported/File skipped (backup of hidden files and folders is not supported)'
  ///WHY????///
  
  ANSWER: (maxtor lies!)
  Well, the mystery is solved. The advertising was *false* for this drive. A Maxtor tech gave me the *super* secret link which states, their software on this drive will NOT back up:
  
  * Operating System files that are in use.
  * Hidden/System Files & Folder *
  * Microsoft Compressed Folders
  * Microsoft Encrypted Folders
  * Offline Files
  Check out the above post from below forum:
  http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/WinXP/microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support/2006-08/msg01554.html
  
  SOLUTION:(?)->
  
  The Acronis program will accomplish your objective rather
  easily & effectively, i.e., it will "clone" the contents of your day-to-day
  working HD to another HD (internal or external) so that you will be able to
  restore your system from the cloned contents of this "destination" drive.
  
  >>>The kind of program we are recommending is usually called a disk imaging
  program. Using this type of program you can, in effect, clone the contents
  of your day-to-day working HD to your USB external HD. Through this direct
  disk-to-disk cloning operation, the recipient of the clone, i.e., your USB
  EHD will be, **for all practical purposes, a bit-for-bit copy of your "source" disk, your internal HD.**
  
  As such it will contain the operating system,
  
  all your programs & applications,
  
  *all your created data -
  
  in short, everything that's on your internal HD.*
  
  What better backup system can one have?<<<
  
  The Acronis program will accomplish your objective rather
  easily & effectively, i.e., it will "clone" the contents of your day-to-day
  working HD to another HD (internal or external) so that you will be able to
  restore your system from the cloned contents of this "destination" drive.<<<
  http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/
  
  I haven't tried the system yet, just putting out the information for interested parties to check out for themselves...(advice)->DYODD.
  ...more info
• Great little mini-drive
  This is a great portable external drive. I can easily switch it from my desktop pc to my laptop. I don't save any data files to my C: drive. It all goes to this external drive so everything is easily accessible no matter which pc I'm using. And, so far, it's worked flawlessly....more info
• My first time purchasing an external hard drive and also my last! Atleast from THIS cheap maxtor company!
  At first when i bought this hard drive at staples it was at a great offer. The price was on "special offer" so i decided, why not try it? Well everything seemed to work fine for the first three months..Well afterwards this product stopped working and my computer didn't reconginze it. Tried it on another pc and nothing. Well i decided to take matters into my OWN hands (since i AM a computer technician) and i opened up this lovely product, only to find out that the actuator arm was stuck onto the hard drive's platter. the actuator arm's head (this is what reads the data on the hard drive's platter) is EXTREMELY SENSITIVE AND GETS DAMAGED VERY EASILY! (because is cheaply made of course) This product is just so badly made. The only thing that would make it expensive is its capacity. Other than that, this product is very cheaply made and that is the reason why many people who bought this product has their unit failing after a few months or even days... GEEE THANKS A ALOT MAXTOR, FOR WASTING MY TIME AND MONEY AND DON'T WORRY I WILL NOT ASK FOR A REPLACEMENT..THIEVES! BY the way can anyone recommend me a good external hard drive that is realiable and will not fail in few months? Thanks...more info
• PC and MAC (yeah, right)
  I thought this will help me backup my stuff in both my pc and my mac. It didn't. Altough the box says (tricky) it works in both....more info
• maxtor 1 touch external junk drive
  I purchased this item before reading these reviews.
  ( My first mistake.)
  My second mistake was opening the box.
  
  I purchased this from Best Buy and was told that it is the must have, for people like me, who don't know a whole lot about computors, who need
  to store and back up info.
  I was also told that it is user friendly.( Not true )
  If you want a temporary cheap buy than go ahead and waste you're money,
  but even the customer support is crappy and half the time they are having
  issues with their call center equiptment!
  For first timers there should be an easy walk through instruction which myne did not.To be a successful business you should not asume that every body knows every thing about what you are selling.
  ...more info
• Great little mini-drive
  This is a great portable external drive. I can easily switch it from my desktop pc to my laptop. I don't save any data files to my C: drive. It all goes to this external drive so everything is easily accessible no matter which pc I'm using. And, so far, it's worked flawlessly....more info
• no brainer
  just plug it in, follow setup instructions and every night while I'm sleeping it backs up my computer...more info
• Solution to the ultimate problem of hard drive failure
  Why are the other reviewers complaining? This is properly labeled by PCMagazine as one of the MUST HAVE tech gadgets. Here's why (provided that you use Windows XP or Vista and IF your computer hard drive is NTFS formatted, not FAT32 formatted -- and it is easy to change to NTFS is you have XP or Vista): if your computer fails, you can be up and running in under an hour by putting in a new hard drive and restoring to the new hard drive the image of your original hard drive. Why is that good? It means that you can continue working with nary a problem. I have 3 of these minis and I rotate them, making a clone of my hard drive every night and storing it in a small fireproof safe. This is easily the easiest and most accurate method of hard drive recovery that exists today. Even PC Magazine agrees with that assessment. Why do the other reviewers think otherwise?...more info
• Great Product
  This is a great hard drive...small and portable. My computer easily and quickly recognizes it when I plug in the usb connector. The only downside is that there is no power adapter/cord for the drive to plug into a wall outlet- so you must plug in a second usb connector to extract power from your computer....more info
• Unreliable and quirky
  Let me start by saying I am usually pretty skeptical about tech reviews because of the many variables involved. If your computer doesn't work properly due to viruses/malware, chances are you're going to have problems with the tech device. My opinion has changed after buying this hard drive. I definitely should have listened to reviews I had read.
  
  So you know where I'm coming from... I (attempt) to use this drive to hold a backup image of of all my data on my MacBook Pro. I'm running Leopard 10.5, and from the very start I had problems formatting the drive (to Mac OS Extended). Apparently, problems arise from using the native Disk Utility in Leopard. You're only supposed to format using Maxtor/Seagate's format utility... which is absolutely absurd. No hard drive should ever need that.
  
  I also had major problems with the "one touch" button on the front. I had to disable all functionality of it (there are several articles telling you to not even touch that button).
  
  Once I got the hard drive "working" after a long work-around, I had problems with my backup. I use SuperDuper! to make incremental backups every night, and I can get maybe two sequential backups before data is corrupted. The drive is always left in some odd state in which it's "in use" but is not doing anything besides taking up space on my desk. Kind of defeats the purpose of backing up if data isn't readable.
  
  Stay away from this drive! Go with more reliable companies such as Western Digital. I had a WD Passport prior to this drive, and I never had an issue.
  
  ...more info
• Poor backup option in image mode
  If you purchased this drive and software (as I did) to restore after system crashes you may be in for a rude surprise - the included Safetydrill software does not (as claimed) delete older versions of backups as required to make space for newer ones, instead it MOVES them to an (undocumented) history folder on the same drive and new backups fail for lack of space... with the failure producing only an inconspicuous error message that could be easily overlooked by unsophisticated users.
  
  At first I found it unbelievable that automatic backup space management was unavailable in Saftydrill, but this was confirmed by Seagate/Maxtor Tech support, making this the least capable backup "solution" I've encountered in the last decade.
  
  So... it you buy this for image-type backups an intend to use the included software be aware after the first few uses it will be *your* responsibility to manage your backup space by manually deleting older backups as required!...more info
• Software has many grave defects
  I was so disgusted with the difficulty of using and setting up the software on this supposedly simple "one touch" device that I returned it after only a few days. For example:
  
  - you can only back up the folders it thinks should have data. Data belonging to programs like Juno that keep data under "Program Files" (admittedly a bad thing to do) can't be backed up at all using the regular scheduled backup software
  - many mysterious error messages about inability to back up files within files.
  - software behaves weirdly (disappears and must be restarted) unless screen is set to 96 DPI.
  - no option to erase personal data from drive when done with it or returning it
  - technical support by email cryptic, minimal, unhelpful, and sometimes just plain wrong.
  
  I have 20 year's experience as a programmer and consider myself an expert computer user; I could not make this software work well enough to be useful....more info
• cable
  the thin cable is only necessary when the computer doesn't provide enough power, but if we won to use it why it has to be around, it should be removable...more info
• Does not work - not recognized by pc
  I got a brand new drive as a gift. I open the package and connect it to my laptop. The drive is not recognized on my laptop. When I ping the customer service desk for technical support, they are quick to ask me to return the drive. They did not attempt to trouble shoot or find any reason. It's as if they were expecting the drive to fail and knew this was a known issue.
  
  I would advice not to go for these drives....more info
• Oh No!, I bought this thing and THEN read the reviews.........
  After losing a hard drive a few months ago to catastropic mechanical failure, and losing a bunch of pictures, I bought this to try to have a back-up in case of a simular event in the future.
  
  During the set-up I was surprised to learn you need two available USB ports to hook the unit up, and I only had one. Bought a cheap USB hub to take care of this problem, (Edit 12-30-08, I tried it with only the data/power USB cable attached and it worked fine, returned the hub). The installation wasn't that difficult, but the information provided was sparse and not very helpful. I kind of stumbled onto things rather than being directed to them. I did do the "Safety Drill" system back-up which is supposed to recover from a complete hard drive failure.
  
  File back-up can be done just by picking "My Documents" folder, or you can select which folders you want to back-up. If there is more than one "user" on Windows you will need to select each one and tell the back-up software which folders to save for that user.
  
  I still feel a little uneasy about whether I have actually successfully backed up the folders I wanted backed up. Probably an easy way to verify this that I just haven't discovered yet.
  
  The unit is small, quiet and has a blinking green indicator light to tell you it's still alive. Several reviewers have talked about how unreliable this Maxtor unit is, and I've considered returning it, but I will probably keep it.
  
  Called Seagate tech support twice today and was impressed with the quick answer time, (less than 1 minute both times), and the friendly, helpful information from both the technicians. After discussing what the unit should do, especially in restoring after a big-time hard drive failure, I felt better about the product. Still, kind of scary reading about the short time to failure from several reviewers of a product that comes with a 5 year warranty.
  
  If I wasn't concerned about it's reliability I'd give it 4 stars, but I'm giving it 3 for now and hoping it'll hang in there long term.
  
  Oh yeah, I'm reminding myself to read the reviews BEFORE making the purchase.
  
  
  
  ...more info
• If you just want a storage device, this is it.
  I've had the drive for more than half a year now and no complaints at all.
  Stores data well and the metal finish adds a feeling of ruggedness.
  A quiet drive which makes barely any noise.
  Has an ok download speed.
  Heard alot of complaints about the software, but I didnt buy the drive for that purpose and have never used the software.
  Have used it on many Windows 9X and Vista PC's and it works beautifully, only once did I have to plug in the second USB connection.
  As of present I wouldnt reccomend this product as its kind of outdated and drives of larger capacity are available for nearly the same price.
  I would reccomend the other drives in this seres and do plan to buy more of them in the future.
  Do not buy the Case Logic Compact Portable Hard Drive Case (Black) which is sometimes recommended by Amazon, as the drive does not fit in it properly ( too loose and cannot attach the USB cable when drive is in the case). Case logic also has a neoprene case which I think works much better but isnt hard. A friend of mine actually used a Nintendo DS case for the drive and it works well....more info
• maxtor one touch 4 mini
  overall great. compact, seems real nice and sturdy, easy to use. the only drawback for me was that it's not cross platform. i was hoping to jump between mac and pc with it, no go. if that's not a problem for you, it is a highly recommended drive....more info