[jmke]

On Thursday, Maxtor Corp. announced a new family of Maxtor OneTouch III external drives, based on the design first incorporated by its 1-terabyte Turbo Edition in October.

The capacity range of the new line will include 100-Gbyte models on up to the terabyte offering, with a 500-Gbyte model designed to compete with existing external drives from Seagate and Hitachi. However, the fate of the OneTouch line remains in doubt, given that rival Seagate agreed to buy Maxtor for about $1.9 billion in December. Seagate announced its internal hard-drive roadmap in October, and disclosed its external drive plans last week. The acqisition is expected to close during the second half of 2006, however, meaning that the Maxtor OneTouch line will most likely be manufactured until then.

The low-end 100-Gbyte drive will only feature a USB 2.0 interface, while the 500-GB models will sport three interfaces: USB 2.0, as well as the Firewire 400 and 800 interfaces that the Apple IBM-powered Macintosh computers use.

Based on customer feedback and new technologies, Maxtor said it has added Sync, the ability to automatically synchronize files between two or more systems on the same operating platform, across its new family of Maxtor OneTouch III drives. A system rollback feature has also been added, in addition to the existing "DriveLock" feature that lets users lock down the drives with a password.

All of the drives use the Turbo Edition's new chassis, designed by frog design, Maxtor said.

The manufacturer's suggested retail price for the Maxtor OneTouch III family will range from $159.95 for the 100GB USB 2.0 only version to $479.95 for the 500GB triple interface solution. The MSRP for the 1TB Maxtor OneTouch III, Turbo Edition is $899.95. While the Turbo Edition is shipping now, the other OneTouch III drives will arrive on store shelves later this month.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...129TX1K0000532