After a long hiatus, Seagate has refreshed the Maxtor OneTouch family of 3.5-inch external drives with new looks and features. FEATURES: The most striking difference between the earlier and the new generation of OneTouch drives is the form factor. Seagate has got rid of the chunky brick-sized form factor and shrunk it into a sleek trapezoidal box. The new 3.5-inch Maxtor OneTouch is available in two variants-OneTouch4 and OneTouch4 Plus. The former is all-black and comes with only the USB interface, and the latter is silver and black with a FireWire 400 interface as well.

Additionally, the OneTouch 4 Plus offers a solution for drive recovery in the event of hard drive failure or data wipeout due to a virus attack. Also, the OneTouch4 Plus is available in 250 GB, 500 GB, 750 GB and 1 TB capacities, while the OneTouch 4 tops out at 750 GB. The key feature of the OneTouch remains data backup at the press of a button. You can backup an entire drive or selective files and folders in scheduled or synchronization modes. For added data security, the backup suite offers both data encryption and password-protection for the drive.

PERFORMANCE: The variant that we reviewed is the 750 GB OneTouch 4 Plus. Utilizing the USB interface, the drive can read and write data at an average speed of 30 MB/s, which equates to half a minute to read or write 1 GB of data. With the FireWire 400 interface, we found a drop of around 3 MB/s in transfer speeds. So opt for the Plus version only if you need the drive recovery feature and better aesthetics. VERDICT: Great value for money!
FOR: One-touch backup, drive mirroring and recovery, robust warranty and support. AGAINST: None.

Specifications
Dimensions (WxHxD!: 63xl71.45x149.35 mm; Weight: 1 Kg; Capacity: 750 GB; Spindle speed: 7200 rpm; Interface: USB 2.0, FireWire 400.