Maxtor Basics 250gb Portable Usb2.0 Hard Disk Drive

So, i've had this little box of tardis like proportions (bigger on the inside, do you see?) backing up my music for a couple of months now and so far, so good.

Plug and play works perfectly. Initial connection to my Vista Home Premium packaged laptop took less than five minutes to install the drivers and recognise the Maxtor as drive F: in my Computer folder. All is done automatically, for you technophobes. It does occupy two USB slots, one for power and one for file transfers which seems strange but hasn't proved to be a problem. Subsequent connections see the drive recognised almost instantly.

The unit itself (3"x5"x1") is encased in sturdy black plastic and looks as if it will take the wear and tear of daily school or college use. I've transported it on a couple of holidays with no ill effects. There are no rubber edges for shock-proofing though, so any drop of significant height or force may see the casing crack (obviously i have not tested this yet!) And there is no on/off switch on the actual unit or seperate power input other than the USB which may upset some of you.

In use, file transfer is pretty fast. The unit comes in NFTS or NTFS, or whatever it is, format so there is no need to configure from FAT and I cleared up half the space on my laptop onto this in about fifteen minutes. That's 50 or 60GB getting transferred. It's quiet and doesn't seem to get to hot even after a few hours of connection.

I'll have to wait and see whether the unit will stand the test of time. As with all hard disk hard drives there is always the possibility it will fail. This review will be subject to change if anything happens but so far, so good, no complaints at all. Except that 250GB just isn't enough!

Bought this a week ago and have used it successfully and without problem so far. It worked straight from the package without installation (Windows XP), with data transfers both ways being smooth and effortless. All this is as one would expect, but the main reason for this review is just to note that it requires TWO USB sockets on your computer. No idea if it will work via a multiway hub plugged into the one socket.

On the basis of good reviews I bought this drive and initially my experience was very good, and I was very impressed; Sleek design, worked as expected straight out of the box, very quiet, and quick data access.

Unfortunately, my delight only lasted hours, as after just 3 hours plugged into my machine the drive (somewhat tragically) died. From this point on the drive light rather feebly winks once and goes out (although you can hear the disc still spinning), and it is no longer recognized by my PC (or any other PC for that matter!). Unfortunately since Maxtor was bought by Seagate there doesn't appear to be any UK support for this product, and the knowledge base on the Maxtor website gives 32 pages for things to try if your Maxtor "drive is unrecognized by Windows", so it looks like this may occur a lot with this brand. Incidentally, I tried them all (Windows USB power & sleep settings, different cable, different ports, different PC, voodoo dolls, ...) and non of this worked. No choice but to return this. Shame really, as it looks quite nice (and for that I've given it a star!).