The “middle” wrap-around plastic is glossy and attracts fingerprints, unlike the top and bottom. The drive has a connector on one side, which is slightly mis-aligned, and a window for the blue activity LED. It also comes with a USB 3.0 super-speed cable (A to microB). Inside the package, we have the drive itself featuring a multi-faceted plastic top cover design which is somewhat similar to the Seagate Expansion Portable drives. This makes it clear to any potential customers that this is a thick drive with an internal height of 15mm – this makes it less useful to those who might want to squeeze it into an older laptop or game console.Ī close look at the underside makes it clear that the drive is made in China, by Seagate, as expected. The side spine has a label with the barcode and serial number of the drive, with the cut-out extending to the other side showing off the thickness of the drive. The contents is listed on the rear, with some of the included “features” enabled by included software that is preloaded onto the drive.

The cardboard box has a blue, black and white colour scheme, with the front showing some of the features including a three year limited warranty. The unit comes boxed in a glossy cardboard box with a cut-out that shows the drive inside, protected by a plastic bubble. As the Maxtor M3 Portable 4Tb drive was the most cost effective option, retailing at AU$209, I chose the product knowing in full confidence that internally, it would be very similar to the Seagate branded offering.Īs every drive that enters service in my fleet undergoes “acceptance testing” for commissioning, I thought I might as well turn it into a review in the case anyone’s interested in just what’s inside and how it performs. But since the Maxtor brand has been long acquired by Seagate and their factories integrated into the Seagate portfolio, the brand has been retained mainly as an alternative brand for external storage. As a result, I knew I would just have to have one.Ĭomputer users of the early to mid 2000’s would probably not be fond of the Maxtor brand, as some of their models were somewhat unreliable. Traditionally, the largest drives tended to command a price premium, reflecting their desirability. The unexpected part was that the largest capacity available also had the lowest cost per gigabyte, making it the best value for money. Not having purchased any external hard drives in a long time, it surprised me to see that the market had advanced to 4Tb 2.5″ portable drives. Seeing as I’m going to go on a holiday sometime next year, one thing I knew I would need is some portable external storage to keep all my experimental data and to backup the photos I will be taking.

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