The OneTouch button that starts a data backup task has an integrated LED indicator of the drive’s operational mode. A power switch, a power connector, one USB 2.0 port, one FireWire400 port, and two FireWire800 ports are located on the rear panel of the device. A cooling fan is also located there.

The capacity of the drive is 200GB; its buffer is 8 megabytes big (the senior model from this series has a 300GB capacity and a 16MB buffer). The spindle rotation speed is 7200rpm; the access time is less than 9 milliseconds. The main feature of this device is its support of three interfaces which guarantee that you can connect the drive to almost any existing computer. The popular USB 2.0 interface has a theoretical bandwidth of 480Mbit/s and, according to the manufacturer, allows up to 34MB/s data-transfer rates in practice. The theoretical bandwidth of FireWire400 (IEEE 1394a) and FireWire800 (IEEE 1394b) interfaces is 400 and 800Mbit/s, respectively. In reality, 42MB/s and 64MB/s data-transfer rates are achievable. It means that users can utilize the speed potential of this hard disk drive more fully if they connect it via FireWire800. The dimensions of the device are 41x140x210mm; its weight is 1.38kg.

The accessories to the drive include a USB cable, a 6-pin FireWire400 cable, a 9-pin FireWire800 cable, a power adapter with a cord, a stand to position the drive vertically, a Quick Start Guide, a warranty coupon and a software CD (with Maxtor OneTouch drivers and utilities, and Dantz Retrospect Express HD).

The average price of this drive is $250.

Testbed and Methods

We tested the drive in the following benchmarks:

• WinBench 99 2.0
• IOMeter 2003.02.15
• FC-Test 1.0

The testbed was configured like follows:

• Albatron PX865PE Pro mainboard
• Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz
• IBM DTLA-307015 HDD, 15GB
• RADEON 7000 32MB graphics card
• 256MB DDR SDRAM
• Microsoft Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4

The USB 2.0 interface of the drive was tested using one of the mainboard’s ports. FireWire400 and FireWire800 interfaces were provided by PCI controllers IEEE 1394b (on Texas Instruments TSB82AA2 chip) and IEEE 1394a (on Texas Ins. TSB12LV26 chip).