The market seems littered with hard drive enclosures and portable hard drives these days, yet we still seem to run into a new one every couple of weeks from some XYZ Company. Then Seagate sent over one of their Maxtor branded 250 GB portable hard drives known as their OneTouch 4 Mini. Although Seagate has its own line of min portable hard drives, the Maxtor drive provides distinctly more powerful backup features, despite a slightly more cobbled look versus the sleeker lines of their FreeAgent Pro products. Does the OneTouch 4 Mini wallow in mediocrity, or does it fight for its right to party? Let’s find out!

Features 

 

The OneTouch 4 Mini features a USB 2.0 interface and support for both PC and Mac platforms, packed into a package about the size of two decks of playing cards, weighing only six ounces. Inside the casing is a 5400 RPM hard drive with 8 MB’s of cache onboard. You’ll find them in 80, 120, 160 and of course 250 GB capacities. A button on the front of the unit gives you direct access to the backup features of the drive through the included software.

Backed up by a 5 year warranty and something called SafetyDrill, Maxtor’s backup software, that rescues your PC from a virus or system failure, it might actually end up being useful. Unfortunately, Mac users get snubbed on this software feature, but apparently, they don’t have the issues that PC users have. The OneTouch 4 Mini supports Windows XP and Vista flavours and on the Mac side, works with Mac OS X (10.4.7 or later).

What’s In The Box?

 

In the box, you’ll find some software on a CD, a manual and a huge honking USB cable that seems totally out of place in the presence of this “mini” portable hard drive. The cable is almost larger than the drive itself!

Plug and Play Time…

 

The OneTouch 4 Mini requires the use of up to two USB connections in order to operate properly. Though most laptops will be fine operating with just one connection, some may require additional power. For users of laptops with few USB ports, this can be an issue if the second connection is required. The other end is mini-USB and plugs into a port located on the front left side of the unit. Once everything is a go, you’ll see the indicator/OneTouch button light up with glee.

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