Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition RAID 0/1, USB 2.0/FireWire 400/FireWire 800 user reviews (1TB)

1.0 stars

"Absolutely the worst piece of hardwarer-AVOID THIS PRODUCT" on April 30, 2006 by DrLee2004

Pros: IT is HUGE-Too bad it doesn't work

Cons: Where do I begin? Software provided is unstable and incredibly slow, firewire 800 isn't recognized by windows xp, firewire 400 takes forever, retrospect is absolutely the worst piece of software

Summary: Sure it is a nice idea to have such a huge storage space to back up my system, but the way this thing is set up really sucks. I had to RMA my first one b/c windows XP wouldn't recognize the drive when it was plugged into firewire 800. I had to use USB 2.0 to install the software and it was soooo slow I couldn't bare the thought of going thru that for the duration of me owning this monster. So, I installed the crappy software they provide with this drive and when I try to initiate it, it takes 2 minutes for the main menu to show up. You might be thinking my computer system is slow-NOT at all. I have an AMD 64 FX55 processor, 4 Gigs of RAM, on a DFI nF4 MOBO. It is not slow at all and it should not take that long for any program to load up. I thought photoshop took long, well this program takes the cake. Anyway, after formatting the drive I tried plugging it into a firewire 400 to see if that would be any better-that is when all hell broke loose and it crashed my system. I called the help center at Maxtor and they suggested all of the steps I had already tried: sequentially power off and powering back up, trying different ports, trying to reinstall the software, but all to no avail. That is when they said that perhaps my firewire 800 interface on the drive was faulty. Well, after several trials and having my system crash on me numerous times I requested a replacement from NEWEGG.COM and they were more than willing to help me out-Thank GOD for Newegg.
I received my second drive After going thru this for the second time with a new drive and new install, I was able to get the thing to stabilize and not crash my system using firewire 400. Firewire 800 connection is still non-existent. The one touch manager & the retrospect program is still incredibly slow and the useless, retrospect program is still not functioning correctly (I have access to the one touch manager, but when I try to establish the setting for retrospect it either makes my processor cycle for 30 minutes (all the while me thinks the dumb program is analyzing my drives to prepare it for backup- dumb me the software is just using up 100% of my processor so I can’t run anything else) or it never initiates and is stuck in the please wait mode. I suppose I can drag my files over to the drive and have it save my files manually, but what’s the use of paying $800 for a drive that is supposed to backup at the touch of a button? In summary, the drive is slow, the software is poor and the one touch button doesn’t program easily with windows xp. I have no idea if anyone else is having the same sort of problems, but I tried doing research before buying this product, but I had no luck finding user opinions; I had to rely on the professional reviews and they are never as helpful. Theoretical reviews do me no good! Thus, I hope this review helps someone else out when they are looking for a back up drive.