Industry’s First Consumer Storage and Backup Solution with Easy, User-Configurable RAID; Innovative Design and Additional New Features Improve Durability and Data Protection for Creative Professionals and Small-business Users
London — October 18, 2005 — Based on customer feedback and innovative new technologies, Maxtor Corporation (NYSE: MXO) today announced its new Maxtor OneTouch III, Turbo Edition external storage solution that takes the complexities out of RAID and delivers a simple-to-use, easy-to-understand solution for the consumer mass market.
With capacities up to one terabyte (1TB or 1,000GB), the new Maxtor OneTouch III, Turbo Edition integrates Maxtor’s award-winning automated backup and restore capabilities for Mac and PC users, allows users to easily configure the solution for either RAID 0 or RAID 1 and includes new software tools to synchronise data between two or more computers and to help repair PC systems after a damaging spyware or virus attack.
Building on Maxtor’s years of success as a leader in external storage, the Maxtor OneTouch III, Turbo Edition also sports a completely new customer experience, including a cool new industrial design, an improved software user interface and redesigned retail package from award-winning consulting firm frog design inc. The solution’s new industrial design provides added reliability and robustness, while being soft to the touch and easily stackable.
The improved user-friendly interface creates a level of consistency and ease of use, and the redesigned retail packaging system protects the product during transit. Built to last, the new high-capacity, dual-drive Maxtor OneTouch III, Turbo Edition solution is aesthetically appealing for either a home or office setting. It features improved acoustics, a self-adjusting cooling system and an inner disk drive casing and shock mounts for additional drive protection, underscoring Maxtor’s commitment to providing durable and innovative storage solutions.
“As a leader in consumer storage and backup solutions, our job is to help protect our customers’ digital lives. We’re thinking about the difficult things so our consumers don’t have to. We want data backup and protection to be virtually effortless,” said Stacey Lund, vice president of marketing, Maxtor Branded Products Group. “We’ve designed our new Maxtor OneTouch III, Turbo Edition to be the easiest, most trustworthy way to reap the benefits of RAID, and to back up and store photos, videos, games, music, business data and personal information in the most demanding environments. Whether you’re a consumer, creative professional, mobile warrior or small business owner, you can use our trusted, intuitive storage solutions in safeguarding your digital life or life’s work.”
The new Maxtor OneTouch III, Turbo Edition is ideal for more advanced users and creative professionals, such as videographers, photographers, and graphic artists who need high performance and high capacity. It’s the industry’s first two-drive solution that is user configurable as either RAID 0 or RAID 1.
Until very recently, a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) — which can increase data safety, performance or both — was only found on very expensive servers.
But now even mainstream computer users can easily take advantage of these benefits by using the new Maxtor OneTouch III, Turbo Edition in a RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration. RAID 0 divides a data stream and writes pieces of it to both drives at once, a process called striping. This process enables significantly faster write and read times for speed-hungry applications like video editing and game loading. RAID 1, also called mirroring, simply takes everything that gets written to the primary hard drive and creates a copy of it on the second drive. That way, if calamity hits the first drive, the second one swings into action so the user does not experience data loss or downtime.
Maxtor has also added Sync — a feature with the ability to automatically synchronise files between two or more systems on the same operating platform — to its newest external storage solution. Increasingly, customers want to share data easily and automatically between home and office, syncing files and folders in both computers. Also, to combat spyware, adware and viruses that can slow a system to a crawl or even a screeching halt, the new Maxtor OneTouch III, Turbo Edition includes a System Rollback feature that reverts a PC system to a healthier point in time while preserving current data. All of these features are easily accessed through Maxtor’s completely redesigned graphical user interface.
All Maxtor OneTouch external storage and backup solutions come with a data security feature called Maxtor DriveLock, providing a password protection option to safeguard contents if the drive is ever lost or stolen. If the Maxtor OneTouch solution falls into the wrong hands, special firmware embedded on the hard drive restricts data access. Even if the internal hard drive is removed from the casing and attached to another computer, access will be denied without the correct password.
The Maxtor OneTouch III, Turbo Edition comes in a 600GB or 1TB capacity and features a triple USB 2.0/FireWire 400/FireWire 800 interface for easy connection to a Mac or PC. Availability begins in December at major retailers and distributors. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) for the 600GB is approximately £410 and aproximately £684 for the 1TB. Please visit www.maxtor.com for local distribution channels and retail outlets.
For further information please contact Natalie or Clarisse at Fleishman Hillard on 0207 395 7068 or at godselln@fleishmaneurope.com / hoffmanc@fleishmaneurope.com
