Maxtor has downsized its awesome One Touch Turbo desktop backup drive into this 100GB Mini model. It looks exactly the same as the Turbo, and it comes with the same excellent software.

The Mini uses a 5,400rpm drive with an 8MB buffer. Even though it has a lower areal density (the number of bits packed onto the drive’s platters—higher is better) than the Seagate drive, the Maxtor drive outperformed Seagate by a small margin in both our 5GB read and 5GB write tests.

The star of the show is the software, which is easily the most fully featured package we’ve ever seen for a drive this size. It lets you password-protect the drive, set folders to automatically sync, restore deleted files, and lots more.

Sure, the Mini delivers the least capacity in this roundup, but 100GB is enough for us. If you’re shopping solely for storage space, by all means get the Seagate; but if you want a drive for backup and syncing, it doesn’t’ get any better than this.

Month Reviewed: October 2006

+ PLATTER: Decent capacity, kick-ass software, and a sleek design.

- FATTER: Only 100GB.

VERDICT: 9
kickass=yes

URL: www.maxtor.com

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