SINGAPORE--Maxtor has unveiled new external hard drives in a bid to tap on increasing broadband penetration and emphasis on digital media content.
According to Craig Davis, the storage vendor's Asia-Pacific sales and marketing manager for branded products group, higher broadband usage and the explosion of multimedia content such as music and video, have led to greater demand for external storage used for data backup.
The company, he added, hopes to capture this growing demand with the newly-launched Maxtor OneTouch III family of external hard drives.
Available in the Asia-Pacific region from the end of March, the hard drives are targeted at home users, businesses and tech-savvy consumers, also dubbed "prosumers". They come in four versions with capacities that range from 100GB to 1TB, which Davis said is the highest offering in the market. The OneTouch III will replace its predecessor, the OneTouch II family.
The FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 models, with capacities of 300GB and 500GB, are aimed at prosumers and business users. There is also a high-end Turbo edition that comes in 600GB and 1TB versions. The USB-only or FireWire 400/USB models, with capacities ranging from 100GB to 500GB, are designed for home users. The recommended retail prices range from S$299 (US$184) to S$1,499 (US$922.48).
New to the OneTouch family is the ability to synchronize files between two or more systems using the same operating platform. Another new feature is system rollback for devices running on Windows operating system--the function allows users to restore their system to an earlier point where it has not been compromisd.
Davis noted that the company spends "a lot of R&D dollars securing these devices" and in the product design, such as making sure there is adequate air flow in the drives. Seagate announced in December that it will be acquiring Maxtor, and the two companies have yet to decide on a strategy to combine their product development, he told ZDNet Asia.
It was "still too early" to tell whether Seagate and Maxtor products will be integrated, said Davis. According to an earlier report, the acquisition is expected to be completed in the second half of this year.