Hands On Review: Maxtor OneTouch III

Like many of us, the friends I am visiting have amassed an impressive music and photo collection on their computers. But they haven't backed any of it up.

So when we were in an Office Depot picking up some Cat5 Ethernet cable for their house, I suggested they get a Maxtor OneTouch backup hard drive. The Maxtor OneTouch III 200 GB was on sale for about $100 with a $50 rebate (good through tomorrow), a good deal for an easy-to-use backup solution.

This also gave me the chance to see if the OneTouch is as easy to set up and use as the reviews suggest. It is. The setup took all of 15 minutes, tops. I installed the software CD and followed the installation setup. Then I plugged in the external hard drive's power adapter, turned the power switch on, and connected the USB 2.0 cable to the hard drive on one end and the PC on the other.

That's it. Once the PC recognizes the hard drive, you press the button on the drive's front panel and the backup settings menu pops up. You can back up a few files or everything, or set a weekly day and time to automatically back up what's on your computer.

With something this easy to use, there truly is no excuse for not backing up your precious data—financial and entertaining. And while 200 GB is a good size for most family PCs, there are 600 GB drives and 1TB (terrabyte) drives that hold scads more photos, videos, games, and music files.

As I mentioned, we got a good deal on this Maxtor model. But if the price still seems too high, check out Christopher Null's recommendation for Moxy, a free online backup service. Free means there truly is no excuse.