Maxtor One Touch III FireWire 400/USB 2.0

Seagate Pushbutton Backup External Hard Drive

X-Bit labs take a further look at two high-capacity external drives from Seagate and Maxtor.

Maxtor One Touch III FireWire 400/USB 2.0 (F01G500) - The 3.5" hard disk drive employed here has a storage capacity of 500GB and is equipped with a 16MB buffer. The spindle rotation speed is 7200rpm; the average seek time is less than 9 milliseconds. The drive supports two interfaces: FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a, iLink, SPB-2) and USB 2.0. The effective bandwidth as specified by the manufacturer is 43MB/s for FireWire 400 and 33MB/s for USB 2.0. The drive is operable within a temperature range of 5 to 35°C. The dimensions of the external case are 136 x 65 x 217mm; the weight of the device is 1.45kg. The device is accompanied with a quick start guide, USB cable, FireWire cable (6x6 pin), power adapter with a cord, and CD with data backup software (EMC Dantz Retrospect HD) and user manual. The retail price of the drive is $470.

Seagate Pushbutton Backup External Hard Drive (ST3400801CB-RK) - The employed hard disk drive has a storage capacity of 400GB and an 8MB buffer. The spindle rotation speed is 7200rpm. The average seek time is 8.5 milliseconds. The device supports FireWire (IEEE1394a) and USB 2.0 interfaces. It can withstand a non-operating shock of 350Gs. The dimensions of the case are 181 x 57 x 165 millimeters; the weight is 1.2kg. The drive comes with a quick start guide, USB cable, FireWire cable, power adapter with a cord, and CD with data backup software (BounceBack Express). The retail price of the drive is $380.

It's going to be interesting to watch the changes in Seagate's external HDD manufacturing policy in the future, but so far the Maxtor OneTouch III seems to be the better buy between the two top models. It is also the optimal choice if you need the maximum storage capacity you can get. The speed factor becomes the more important when there are large amounts of data to be written to or read from the drive, minimizing your waiting time. From this point of view, the FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b) interface should be most appropriate, too. Such drives are already available in Maxtor's product line-up and we will test them on our site soon. We will also probably see this interface in new large-capacity external drives from the joined Seagate-Maxtor company.