The market is filled with portable USB “pocket” drives with capacities up to 250GB. The Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini, a 160GB drive, stands out as one of the few that provide disaster recovery as well as data backup.

The OneTouch 4 Mini uses Maxtor’s OneTouch data backup program and its SafetyDrill utility, which copies an image of your C: drive onto the Mini. In case of computer catastrophe you can use the recovery boot CD to restore your PC (even if you need to replace your C: drive) - provided that your PC uses an NTFS- formatted drive. (Sorry, Mac users, you’re out of luck on this.) The Mini also has a 256-bit encryption utility to safeguard your data should the drive be lost or stolen.

The 5,400-rpm Mini is fast, taking 51seconds to back up my test folder using the One Touch utility and 49 seconds with Windows drag-and-drop. (Anything under a minute is quick.)

The list price of the OneTouch 4 Mini is lower on a GB- per-dollar basis that that of competing products from Toshiba and Western Digital. By adding in disaster recovery features and an ample five-year warranty, Maxtor has made the Mini an ideal travel companion.

Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini Short Reviews
Price range: $149.99

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