by Andrey Kuznetcov
06/15/2005 | 06:54 PM
You have already met the OneTouch series of external hard disk drives in our reviews. This time we’re going to talk about the junior model of the second generation of this family which supports the USB interface only. Though it may lack unique features, it makes sense to check it out just to have a fuller picture of the whole family.
I want to remind you briefly about the main features of OneTouch II series drives the reviewed model is endowed with, too. The name of the family comes from the special technology that allows the user to back up data with a single press of the button on the front panel. Another innovation, called DriveLock, helps to protect your confidential information by setting a password to access files. The software you receive with the external drives of that series can automate the data backup process, save historical backup versions, restore the system or roll it back to its previous state, and perform a diagnostics check of the drive.
As for the exterior, the junior model is an exact copy of its larger-capacity mates: its gray metallic case made of anodized aluminum looks rather cute. The button that gave the name to the whole family is located on the front panel. A LED indicator of the operation mode is built into this button. The metal grid on the front panel facilitates ventilation of the device. A Power button, a USB port and a power connector are located at the rear panel of the case. There’s also a fan there, at the rear panel.
The E14E100 model uses a 100GB hard disk drive with an 8MB buffer (the 250GB and 300GB models are equipped with a 16MB buffer). The spindle rotation speed is 7200rpm; the average seek time is below 9 milliseconds. The device works across the USB 2.0 interface and the manufacturer declares an up to 34MB/s data-transfer rate. You can position the drive either horizontally or vertically, using a special stand. The dimensions of the device are 41x140x220mm, its weight is 1.38kg.
The accessories to the drive include a USB cable, an external power adapter with a cord, a stand, a CD with software, a user’s manual, and a warranty.
The average retail price of the device is $140.
I used WinBench 99 2.0 and FC-Test 1.0 as my benchmarking tools. The testbed was configured like follows:
I will pit the reviewed drive against another Maxtor from the same family (the 250GB E01G250 model – see our article called External 250GB HDD from Maxtor: OneTouch II E01G250 Review for details about it) and against one more device of the same class, the 120-gigabyte Lacie d2 FireWire Hard Drive.
Before reading the numbers below, take a look at the data-transfer graph:
The data-transfer rate graph is a perfectly straight line that goes slightly below 33MB/s. This is a little lower than 34MB/s as declared by the manufacturer. The straight like is an indication of the drive’s inability to show its speed potential fully because it is limited by the effective bandwidth of the USB 2.0 interface.
Now I will check the performance of the drive when its whole capacity is formatted in FAT32. We’ve got two results here: Business Disk WinMark and High-End Disk WinMark, the latter having more priority. Surprisingly, the performance of the Maxtor E14E100 turns out to be much worse than that of the senior model. I’m not quite sure as to the reasons for that. There may be some problem with the testbed, or it’s possible that this is due to the two drives from Maxtor having different firmware.
When the tests are performed on a 32GB partition, the performance of the Maxtor E14E100 goes up a little, but it is still far below the performance of the senior model. It’s generally the same picture as we’ve seen above.
Now, the results in NTFS bring no surprises: as you can see from the diagram, the E14E100 is faster than the other Maxtor even when the latter is connected to the computer via FireWire.
When the partition size is reduced to 32GB, the Maxtor E14E100 is second, losing the first place to the other Maxtor which was connected through FireWire. This is quite natural since the tested partition takes up more of the “faster” external cylinders of the 250GB model.
As always, FC-Test is the last of our tests. It reflects the real-life performance of hard disk drives. This benchmarking tool measures the time it takes to create (i.e. to write), to read and to copy a few sets of files that differ in the size and number of files included. Knowing this time we can calculate the speed of the drive.
As you remember, the Windows and Programs patterns consist of many smaller files, while the other three patterns include a few larger files. Two 32GB partitions are created on the drives for the copy operations and the file patterns are first copied within the same partition (copy near) and then from one partition to another (copy far).
I begin with the NTFS results, and the first diagram shows the speed of creating (writing) the file patterns. The 100-gigabyte Maxtor is the slowest drive in every pattern. The closest drive to it is the other Maxtor attached via USB 2.0.
When they were reading files, the junior model from the OneTouch II family proved to have a slightly higher performance that the senior model attached via USB 2.0: the 100-gigabyte model is ahead of the 250-gigabyte one in four patterns out of five. Meanwhile, the Maxtor E01G250 profits a lot by being attached to the computer through a FireWire connector.
The next test action is copying file within the same partition. The Maxtor E14E100 proves to be considerably faster than its opponents when processing the two patterns that consist of numerous small-size files. It also wins the test of copying the Install pattern. In the remaining two cases, it cedes the first place to the senior model from Maxtor when the latter is attached via FireWire.
Copying files from one partition to another produces a picture which is almost the same as the previous diagram. Once again the 100-gigabyte external hard disk drive from Maxtor wins three patterns out of five.
Now let’s switch to FAT32 and see what happens. The first diagram shows that the Maxtor E14E100 is the slowest among the three as concerns creating (writing) our file patterns. This is especially conspicuous with the two many-small-files patterns.
The Maxtor E14E100 is again slower than the other two drives at reading. There’s small difference between the results of the drives in this test, though.
The Maxtor E14E100 is a bit faster than the Lacie drive at copying files within one and the same partition, but it is still rather far behind the other Maxtor. The larger buffer of the latter model might be considered as a contributing factor to its success, but it should have shown up in FAT32, too, which it did not.
The last subtest is about copying files from one partition to another. Once again we see the E14E100 model being much slower than the 250MB Maxtor and slightly faster than the drive from Lacie.
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.