Retrospect Express is the software that Maxtor bundles with its OneTouch II SBE product: it worked very well in testing, and was much faster at recovery than the Axiomtek solution. It's also possible to target backups at specific directories or entire drives, incremental or complete, on demand or per schedule. A wizard leads users through the entire process and even enables e-mail delivery of status messages and alerts. A client option permits backup status information to be directed to a network user in the form of an Outlook task item, for easy monitoring and reporting.

But Maxtor appears to have overlooked disaster recovery applications in its offering. There's neither a bootable software CD included with the OneTouch II, nor can a system boot from the external drive should the primary fail. Those who plan to buy multiple external drives might want to consider buying only a single Small Business Edition and purchase multiple OneTouch II models instead, as a money-saving strategy.