X-bit labs

Maxtor OneTouch II External Hard Disk Drive with FireWire 800 Interface (page 8)

Category: Storage

by Andrey Kuznetcov

[ 09/01/2005 | 09:30 AM ]

Conclusion

The reviewed device will certainly interest people who need a high-performance external disk drive. Of course, it is not the drive that much, but the supported FireWire800 interface, not very popular in computers yet, that ensures high data-transfer rates.

As you have seen, this peripheral interface offers speeds comparable with what you have with standard hard disk drives connected via ATA or Serial ATA interfaces (of course, assuming their spindle rotation speed is the same). Yes, the support of three interfaces allows you to connect to more computers, too, but we would recommend this product for its high speed with FireWire800 in the first place rather than for that connection flexibility. Speed being your priority, you won’t hesitate to purchase an additional FireWire800 controller, if your mainboard lacks one. The positive effect from using this interface is going to be felt the most if you’re frequently copying large amounts of data – it can save a lot of your time.

This category of performance-oriented users may also be interested in the senior model of the OneTouch II series. Besides a 300GB storage capacity, it features a larger, 16MB, buffer which should lead to even more speed. We can’t, however, take it for granted, but we hope we’ll soon have an opportunity to test that model in our lab, too.