Conclusion

To tell you the truth, we didn’t expect the 100-gigabyte OneTouch drive from Maxtor to differ much from the larger-capacity model we had tested earlier, if they were both to be attached via USB 2.0. And really, the only significant design difference between these two models was the different number of platters in the hard disk drives employed, so they should have performed more or less similarly. But it turned out not quite so in practice. The two models are only equal in NTFS, with some advantage on the side of the E14E100 even when its 250-gigabyte mate is connected via FireWire.

Things are quite different in the classic FAT32 file system: both WinMark scores of the junior, 100GB model are much lower than the senior model’s. The gap is so obvious that we can’t regard it as something accidental. FC-Test indicates that the write speed of the E14E100 is low, which negatively affects the speed of copying files. The read speed of the E14E100 doesn’t differ much from that of the 250GB model. I can’t think of a sensible explanation of these facts. I have just two suppositions: 1) there’s something wrong with the testbed or 2) the manufacturer deliberately sharpened the drive for NTFS through the firmware.

So, basing on the results of the tests I can say that you won’t be disappointed with the Maxtor OneTouch E14E100 if you format it in NTFS. In this case, the performance will be up to the level of other external hard disk drives of the same class.