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One-Touch Data Salvation
By Arik Hesseldahl

How much of the data stored on your PC could you stand to lose?

If the question gives you pause, then it may be that you simply haven't thought about it. For some people the very thought is the stuff of nightmares. Increasingly, the fruits of our labor, our record of correspondence, our personal libraries of music or reading material and even home movies and family photos all exist only on a hard drive, where they've been reduced to relatively vulnerable ones and zeros.

Maxtor's Personal Storage 5000XT

Vulnerable, that is, to the kinds of catastrophes that most digital storage media are not readily designed to withstand, like a fire or a sudden violent motion.

Professionals will tell you that there's no excuse for having only one copy of any digital data you need to preserve for any extended length of time. And that's why they make routine backups. In the event of very bad things happening, they can salvage at least the majority of the data stored on a machine. On Sept. 11, 2001, a lot of companies, along with having to cope with the loss of colleagues, learned they had also lost incredibly valuable records.

The lesson they learned is to always have a reliable backup. The more copies of crucial files that you have, the better their chances of survival. Hard drive manufacturer Maxtor has been selling external hard drives for personal computers aimed at meeting this need for years.

This week it announced a round of updates to its personal storage products that include an interesting feature: the ability to back up your files at the touch of a single button on the outside of the drive.

There are three new drives in the series, the flagship being the 250-gigabyte 5000XT. The 5000DV has 120 GB and the 5000LE has 80 GB. All three have Maxtor's OneTouch feature, which launches the backup process.

All three connect to the PC through a USB 2.0 connection. If your PC doesn't have USB 2.0 ports yet, it will still connect -- though more slowly -- to the older USB 1.1 ports. There's also Firewire connection ports as well. All three also support Windows-based PCs as well as Macintosh computers.

The drives come bundled with Dantz Retrospect Express software, which runs on both PCs and Macs and is designed for backing up files you select at regular intervals.

The drives are shipping now at prices ranging from about $200 for the 80-GB 5000LE to $400 for the 250-GB 50000XT. That's pocket change when you start considering the value of all those ones and zeros.