
Maxtor's recent press release sounded exciting: Could 1 TeraByte (1,000 Gigabytes) in an external hard drive actually be true? Well, yes and no. The total capacity of the OneTouch III is indeed 1 TB, but it is achieved by assembling two 500 GB hard drives into one enclosure that is double the size of conventional external hard drive products.
Maxtor isn't the first company to offer a product that consists of multiple hard drives. In fact, third party vendor LaCie stands out with its large portfolio of dual and quad drive external storage products: Big Disk, Bigger Disk, Biggest Disk. Still, Maxtor is the first hard drive maker to offer a multi-drive product by itself now.
While the results are the world's largest, consumer-type external hard drive products, the approach using two hard drives also shows that the hard drive companies may be soon running into pressure. On the one hand, Maxtor would not have made the TeraByte hard drive come true if there were no demand for such a beast. On the other hand, new applications with high storage demands are currently emerging: We are referring to High Definition audio and video content, which is capable of taking consumption of music and video to a whole new level. At the same time, it will take capacity demands to a different level.
The industry wants us to buy content on a subscription basis, but where are we supposed to store movie packages that potentially consume up to 50 GB each - the capacity of a two-layer Blue-ray disc? Storing only ten of these movies would fill today's largest hard drives. Even if you recorded HD video yourself and reduced the requirements by 50%, your recording time would be somewhat restricted. More efficient codecs such as H.264 will help to keep storage requirements to an acceptable level, but we haven't even mentioned uncompressed HD content that still wants to be edited...
Obviously, the hard drive industry won't stop at 500 GB per 3.5" drive. New technologies such as perpendicular recording (as in Toshiba's 1.8" 80 GB drives or Seagate's new 2.5" Momentus 5400.3) will help to further increase capacity points. Until then, LaCie's and Maxtor's approach seem to be the first teraByte solutions that are both feasible and flexible.

Both teraByte boxes are massive, but well finished. Maxtor decided to use a plastic case with rubber top and bottom covers, a sufficient number of vents and a small fan at the rear side. Despite the plastic cover, it is slightly heavier, at almost 6 lbs, than LaCie's product (5.6 lbs). The LaCie drive is made of aluminum, and also uses a fan to keep the drives cool. It's good that both fans work at a low speed, so they do not create too much noise. Yet you will hear both unless your computer makes a lot of noise by itself.
Technically, both companies have made products that are pretty much the same. Each consists of a pair of 3.5" hard drives whose capacities are combined in order to hit the fancy capacity point of one million megaBytes (a thousand gigabytes or one teraByte). However, as is always the case with hard drives, these numbers are based on the assumption that a kiloByte consists of 1,000 Bytes, while in fact one kiloByte is 1,024 Bytes. If you go ahead and do the math based on this, both drives actually store approximately 931 GB only.
While LaCie uses Seagate hard drives, Maxtor obviously goes for its own products (although Maxtor has recently been bought by Seagate). The LaCie uses the UltraATA interface, while Maxtor's OneTouch III Turbo is the first external hard drive in our test labs that is based on Serial ATA.
In terms of configuration, Maxtor decided to place one drive on top of the other, giving the OneTouch III Turbo the appearance of a brick; LaCie's Big Disk Extreme looks more like a "storage flounder". Thanks to the active ventilation, both can be stacked without risking any drives overheating. The OneTouch III Turbo can be operated horizontally or vertically, while you will need to mount a stand on the Big Disk Extreme in order to mount it upright.



The Big Disk Extreme is the dual drive model of the LaCie d2 series. All drives come in a nice aluminum case and offer either USB 2.0, Serial ATA or USB 2.0 with Firewire 400 & 800. The latter models are called Extreme with Triple Interface.
There are two Big Disk Extreme drives available, the regular one with USB 2.0 only, and the triple interface variant that has the additional Firewire ports. Yet there is another difference: While the storage area of the regular version spans across both hard drives (using JBOD), the Big Disk Extreme with Triple Interface is actually based on a RAID 0. As a result, it offers excellent performance when attached via Firewire/1394b at 800 MBit/s. However, this comes at the price of exposing your data to increased risk: Should either of these two drives fail, all of the data will be lost. From this point of view it's a pity that the user does not get the option to select whether to run a fast RAID 0 or a more secure JBOD setup.
LaCie provides a full set of cables for USB 2.0, Firewire 1394a and Firewire 1394b (for 800 MBit/s transfers). There is no manual, but a compact quick start guide booklet is included that will help beginners to get going.




Of course we could not resist opening the Big Disk Extreme, because we wanted to know what drives and what interface types LaCie decided to use. Only two screws need to be removed at the back of the drive in order to pull the base module out of the cover. Please note that LaCie placed a sticker on one of these screws saying that opening the drive would void your warranty.
We found two of the latest generation Barracuda drives inside the Big Disk Extreme: Seagate's ST3500841A. Experienced users will easily recognize that these are UltraATA drives. These store 500 GB each, come with 16 MB cache memory and run at 7,200 RPM.



Seagate's Barracuda 7200.9 is a popular drive. Unfortunately, LaCie only provides a one-year warranty, while Seagate grants five years to retail drives.

LaCie includes an installation disc that holds the LaCie Backup Software. However, it is clearly less powerful than the programs that Maxtor provides. Basically, all you do is select folders that you want to backup by clicking the Customize button, and the backup software will go ahead and perform this task. It will store all your backup data onto the target drive (preferably a Big Disk Extreme) and add a date prefix to the copied folders - that's it. It would be nice to be able to do full system backups, create incremental or full backup sets and do some scheduling as well.



The OneTouch III Turbo is different from LaCie's Big Disk Extreme, and this applies not only to its appearance. First of all, it has a real power switch at the back side, which helps to physically turn off the drive when needed; LaCie's product powers up as soon as you plug in a connector.
Since Maxtor offers a total capacity of 1 TB, we were curious as to how the two 500 GB DiamondMax 11 drives work together. Again it is a RAID 0 setup that you have to choose in order to hit the large capacity point. But there is another option: If you want your data to reside more securely, you may also configure the OneTouch III Turbo to run in RAID 1 mode, mirroring the content onto the second drive; this of course means total capacity of the unit will be only 500 GB. However, Maxtor does not provide the option to simply combine the capacity of both drives. The RAID level selection has to be done using Maxtor's setup software.

As you can see, the OneTouch III Turbo is quite massive.

There are two Firewire 800 ports, but only one Firewire 400 connector, which means that daisy-chaining Firewire devices will only work with Firewire 800.

Maxtor provides everything you need: Cables for USB 2.0, Firewire 1394a and Firewire 1394b.

"Capacity: 1000 GB" That sounds nice!


The button on the front is Maxtor's popular OneTouch button, which can be programmed to execute an application of your choice, synchronize folders using the Sync feature, or run a pre-defined backup process.
Inside: DiamondMax 11 Debuts

Again, we decided to open the product in order to check what drives Maxtor is using, but this turned out to be a bit more difficult than opening the Big Disk Extreme. Still, after removing some screws and the top and bottom covers, the case can be opened easily. But again you should be aware that the manufacturer will void the warranty if you run into trouble.
As we expected, there were two Maxtor hard drives, but we found a model that has not found its way into our test labs yet: The DiamondMax 11. Available in 400 GB and 500 GB capacities - using three and four platters, respectively - it matches Hitachi's and Seagate's current offerings. That also includes Native Command Queuing support, 300 MB/s interface bandwidth and 16 MB cache memory.



As we already outlined before, storage companies like to define a kiloByte as 1,000 Bytes, rather than 1,024 Bytes which would be more appropriate. As a consequence, the total net capacity of the OneTouch III Turbo is 931 GB rather than 1,000 GB or a teraByte.
Maxtor wants the software to be installed prior to attaching the OneTouch III Turbo to the host system. If you do things this way, the Maxtor Storage Manager will automatically detect the drive and prompt you to format it. The factory default is RAID 0, which will result in the maximum capacity and performance. If you want to go for the more secure RAID 1, you will have to open the Storage Manager software and change the RAID level manually.


The Maxtor Storage Manager is used to administer all features including the backup strategy, data synchronization options, and basic settings. It is also required to initiate restore and rollback operations. A rollback is required if you need to restore certain data conditions on your hard drive(s).

There are several options that you can alter.

Maxtor's Sync feature can also be used to transfer a large amount of data from one system to another, and keep it synchronized and updated every time you travel.

The button actually is quite a powerful item. It can be used to run a pre-defined backup, to synchronize data, or to launch any other application. It may also be useful to run a more complex batch file or backup script using the OneTouch button.
Performance & Power Settings

The performance setting has an influence on the drives' access time, using acoustic management.

Power management is a feature that most external storage products do not offer at all. Maxtor allows you to power the OneTouch III Turbo down automatically when it runs idle after a selectable period of time.
Security Setup

The security setup page is very much self-explanatory.
The RAID Dilemma

As already described, Maxtor offers a RAID 1 redundancy mode, which will protect your data in case one of the drives should fail, at the cost of half of its capacity.

In addition to the Maxtor Storage Manager, you will receive a "slimmed down" version of the Retrospect Express backup software, which allows for comprehensive backups or saving duplicate (most recent) files. After choosing this, you can select to backup your entire hard drive, specific files or folders or even file types. However, we found it confusing to read the term "back up the entire computer", because it suggests that the whole Windows installation may be backed up, which is not the case. The Maxtor CD is not even bootable to allow you to restore a system backup. Retrospect Express allows for automatic backups at a scheduled day and time (see screenshot below).



| System Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Processor(s) | AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
2.0 GHz, 512 kB L2 Cache (Manchester core) |
| Platform | Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI, Rev. 1.02
NVIDIA nForce4 SLI chipset |
| RAM | Crucial Ballistix DDR-400 (BL2KIT6464Z402)
2x 512 MB, CL2-2-2-6 Timings |
| System Hard Drive | Seagate Barracuda ATA 7200. (ST316027AS)
160 GB, 7,200 RPM, 8 MB Cache, Serial ATA II |
| Mass Storage Controller(s) | Integrated nForce4 SATAII & UltraATA/133
Texas Instruments TSB32AA2 Firewire/1394b |
| Test Hard Drive(s) | Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo 1 GB |
| Networking | nForce4 on-chip Gigabit Ethernet NIC |
| Graphics Card | NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT, PCI Express, 256 MB GDDR3 |
| System Software & Drivers | |
| OS | Microsoft Windows XP Professional 5.1.2600, Service Pack 2 |
| Platform Driver | NVIDIA Forceware 6.70 |
| Graphics Driver | NVIDIA Forceware 81.85 |
Benchmark Results
Firewire/1394b








The capacity point of almost one teraByte is impressive all by itself. However, the products that LaCie and Maxtor put together deliver more than just raw storage capacity. Both LaCie and Maxtor deployed all the interfaces that are important for quick and flexible data exchange. Almost every computer has USB ports these days, Firewire is important for isochronous data transfers (e.g. audio and video streams) and Firewire 1394b is the premier choice for the highest bandwidth requirements.
Both LaCie and Maxtor cater to the performance-sensitive customer and run their teraByte products using a fast, but risky RAID 0. Be aware that your data is at a higher risk, because all of it will be gone should even one of the two drives fail. Maxtor offers a RAID 1 option, cutting the capacity by 50%, but increasing data safety by a considerable amount. However, both companies fail to offer a simple JBOD setup that would merge the capacity of both drives without decreasing data safety.
On the software side, Maxtor wins over LaCie by providing a backup software that is more comprehensive. It schedules, allows for different backup strategies, and is capable of working in the background. But still it's not capable enough to create complete system backups for disaster recovery.
In the end, both drives perform more or less alike, making the decision a really difficult one. While it is Maxtor delivering the better feature set in hardware and software, we don't understand why both companies settled with a warranty of only a year. It leaves quite a bad aftertaste that certainly isn't a good fit for these otherwise great drives.
