Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition

Evgenie Rudometov

Rudometov@rudometov.com

Developing the bar of the transportable disk drives created for corporate sector, company Seagate has released model Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition, created on the basis of a 2,5-inch hard disk (HDD) with information capacity of 160 Gbytes

Estimating IT market development, it is necessary to consider, that one of features of modern economy is the problem of implementation of production. Really, it is not enough to develop and release the next product, still it is necessary to present it favourably and, of course, to sell. In the conditions of a saturated market it is uneasy and far not cheap task.

One of perspective paths are development of successful names and creation of the appropriate brands leaning against positive image of legal owners. Solving this task, many companies quite often gain contestant firms together with their developments, including known brands.

As an example it is possible to result sorbtion in 2006 of Maxtor corporation company Seagate which is the leader in the field of development and production of hard disks. Thus specified leader did not begin to ignore the best reachings of the recent competitor, and has routed them on advantage of the prospering business. Moreover, heads Seagate it has been decided to leave even a brand of the recent competitor, labelling it some products. The bars of external hard disk drives oriented mainly on the corporate market concern such products. They are decorated by a well-known brand «Maxtor» though a basis of these products are HDD companies Seagate.

As an example it is possible to result the bar of the transportable disk drives hooked up by means of interface USB and created on the basis of 2,5-inch hard disks. Among arrangements of the given group these arrangements yet have no competitive alternatives. It is linked by that at compact design they provide is unprecedented low cost of an information storage. For this reason such disk drives are claimed and very popular. As the result, many companies release various models of transportable disk drives. In the conditions of a hard competition they permanently perfect used processing techniques and units. Thus to radical upgrade are exposed not only HDD, making a basis of transportable disk drives, but also design of disk drives, and also the software accompanying them (ON). As a result there are new bars of disk drives with the improved properties, to the greatest degree satisfying requirements of users. Thus for the purpose of reaching of peak efficiency of the bar of disk drives for private and corporate users are divided.

For corporate sector company Seagate has released the bar of transportable disk drives Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition. The high representative of this bar now is the model which information capacity makes 160 Gbytes. Such model has been given on acquaintance and testing.

Package

The package of disk drive Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition is resulted by size of 160 Gbytes in a Fig. 1.

This package consists of following components:

·         the Packing box with the nested shock-proof container,

·         the Transportable USB-disk drive of 160 Gbytes with preinstalled ON,

·         the Cable of hooking up of the disk drive to USB-ports of the computer,

·         the Manual on fast installation.

Fig. 1. Package Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition

Key parametres

Now at the bar of transportable disk drives Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition there are five models, possessing in the size 60, 80, 100, 120, 160 Gbytes.

Arrangements Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition are oriented to the computer market of compact transportable disk drives. They can be used both with servers and workstations, and with notebooks and desktop computers,

Short parametres of high model Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition are resulted in Table 1.

Table 1. Short parametres of high model Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition

Model	R14E160
Size, a Gbyte	160
The sizes, mm	133 h 90 h 20
Weight, g	205
The interface	USB 2.0, compatibility USB 1.1
Power supplies	Through USB
Band of an operating temperature, With	5-35
Operating systems	Windows 2000 Professional, XP Professional or XP Home Edition; Mac OS

The disk drive is hooked up to the computer by means of an USB-cable. This cable from one end has USB miniplug plug, another — is ended by two standard plugs USB. Thus one of them is for an information transfer with simultaneous realisation through it of power supplies of the controller and HDD the arrangements, the second — for feed of the additional energy necessary in case of insufficient power supply through the main plug. Presence of second plug USB on a cable guarantees necessary power supplies even at nonconventional ports USB of the computer that happens in case of usage of some models of the notebooks which are not supporting to the full specifications USB 2.0. Nevertheless, possibly, possibility and external energopitanija the disk drive from the special adapter gained separately is just in case provided.

All accessories of the transportable disk drive are placed in metalloplastikovyj tank (a Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Disk drive Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition

Considering tank, easily there is in an end face USB miniplug and the plug of external power supply, and in the opposite end of the disk drive – the plastic button highlighted by a light-emitting diode. This button provides activation of process of saving of the information (backup).

The disk drive is equipped 2,5 ”HDD Seagate Momentus 5400.3 with a perpendicular magnetic recording. Informational size HDD — 160 Gbytes, speed of rotation of slices — 5400 ob./mines, a cache memory — 8 Mb.

The disk drive is delivered with the preinstalled firm software. It provides possibility of fast saving of data (backup), and also supports enciphering of contents HDD.

Realised in Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition hardware-software resources of the interface are compatible to all widespread operating systems. These resources do not demand additional drivers and provide a data transfer high speed: as is known, speed limit of interface USB  2.0 — to 60 Mb per second.

The manufacturer in specifications results a transfer rate of 33 Mb per second. It is rather high metric for such type of arrangements, and they, of course, demand check. It can be made in the course of the testing which results are resulted more low.

Testing

As a computer platform for testing of the transportable disk drive of model R14E160 of size of 160 Gbytes of bar Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition compact notebook Fujitsu Siemens LIFEBOOK P7010 used.

Into notebook structure enter:

·         Motherboard FUJITSU FJNB189 (the processor bus of 400 MHz, Intel chip set 855GME with the built in graphics subsystem and ICH4-M),

·         Intel of Pentium M ULV 733 (1.10 GHz, 2048 Kbytes of cache memory L2, clock rate of the processor bus of 100 MHz that provides data transfer with frequency of 400 MHz),

·         the Disk drive on hard 2,5-inch magnetic disks HDD FUJITSU MHT2060AT in size of 60 Gbytes,

·         Units of dynamic storage DDR333 SDRAM of 512 Mb,

·         the Videoadapter presented by resources of the built in drawing of a chip set of Intel 855GME,

·         Optical drive MATSHITA UJDA755 DVD/CDRW,

·         the Operating system of Microsoft Windows XP HomeEdition.

The disk drive after its hooking up to the transportable computer was identified at once by WindowsXP operating system, and in a window «My computer» has appeared a new logical disk.

By means of a choice of appropriate options on the display screen values of information capacity have been output. In a Fig. 3 menu fragments «My computer» / "Properties" are presented.

Fig. 3. A menu fragment «My computer» / "Properties"

For matching with considered model Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition (Maxtor 160GB) it is used popular external disk drive ZIV of 20 Gbytes (ZIV 20GB) there was company InPrice. The given arrangement of all was several years ago the champion not only on size, but also on transfer rate metrics that allowed to recommend it as the powerful tool of system administrators.

As software of an estimation of high-speed parametres of transportable disk drives specialised tests of popular package Winbench  99 have been used . The received results are presented in Table 2 and in a Fig. 4.

Table 2. The Transfer rate

Arrangements	Tests
	Disk Transfer Rate: Beginning (1000 bytes per second)	Disk Transfer Rate: End (1000 bytes per second)
Maxtor 160GB	30800	25200
ZIV 20GB	981	979

Fig. 4. High-speed parametres of transportable 160 Gbytes of the disk drive of bar Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition

In Table 3 access time estimations (less – better) are resulted.

Table 3. Access time

Arrangements	Results of testing
Maxtor 160GB	16,8 msec
ZIV 20GB	26,1 msec

As follows from the results received in the course of testing, 160 Gbytes the transportable disk drive of bar Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition possess not only high size, but also very good speed regulation characteristics. They practically coincide with the declared value (results of testing somewhat depend on used tests and hardware-software resources of the computer).

The given arrangement as an effective remedy of carrying over and an information storage for users of computers of different sectors of the market allows to recommend high parametres of the tested disk drive: from compact notebooks to servers.

The transportable disk drive of bar Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition has been given by company EASTSIDEConsulting, notebook Fujitsu Siemens LIFEBOOKP7010 — the Moscow representation of company Fujitsu SiemensComputers