As if Maxtor's OneTouch II series didn't get enough awards for stability and speed in the large capacity segment, by launching the Mac version with Firewire connectivity we can only expect new ones.

Having already capacities of 200 and 300GB, Maxtor has no intention of stopping here and announces that by the end of the year it will also offer a 500GB version.

This drive's most important innovation is the Firewire 800 connectivity solution, which is usually aimed at the pro environment due to the extremely fast transfer rates. Aside from this solution, Maxtor has also included solutions with more moderate transfer rates, such as FireWire 400 and USB 2.0.

The transfer rates of 800 MBps are suitable for processing high resolution graphical elements, audio/video content or large size multimedia files.

Firewire 800 is twice as fast as the Firewire 400 and almost 66 times faster than USB 1.1. For an extra speed boost, the drive was also fitted with a 16MB buffer.