These are 7200RPM drives with 16MB of cache memory making them perfect for any task in the modern DAW studio. I tested the new drives not only with music audio and session files from my Pro Tools studio but my Quicken™ tax records and magazine Word documents. All performed quickly and flawlessly. I especially liked their new case design and quiet operation. I could hear no fans or noisy head seeking machinery--an important consideration in aurally hypersensitive music studios.

There are three new drive models. The OneTouch 4 Plus, a cool-looking monolithic industrial design that'll fit into any home or office with sizes of 500GB, 750GB and 1TB and prices from $159 to $299 MSRP. The Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini is a portable unit the size of an Apple iPhone that start at $99 for the 160GB and go to $179 for a 320GB. It is a USB 2.0 drive and faster than many Firewire 400 drives. The cost-effective Maxtor OneTouch 4, starting at $79 for a 250GB version, has Maxtor's simple user interface for easy and automatic backup scheduling. Like all these drives, it features a five-year warranty and is compatible with Mac OSX, Windows Vista and XP.

Maxtor's OneTouch 4 family of products include: the ability to perform multiple-computer data synchronization, root-level recovery for complete restoration of an entire computer system called SafetyDrill™, automated scheduling back up software with two levels of security to prevent unauthorized access called DrivePass™, and a drag-and-drop folder-level 253-bit AES encryption.