Later releases of the OneTouch III Turbo 600GB are available with RAID 0/1 capabilities. 600GB products with RAID 1 functionality have Kit Numbers that start with "C0". All OneTouch III Turbo 1TB models are avaible with RAID 0/1 capability.

While it’s not possible to determine if a OneTouch III Turbo 600GB Drive has RAID 0/1 capabilities based on its model number or serial number, and you may not know the kit number if the drive’s original packaging is no longer available, you can still determine the drive’s RAID capabilities based on its firmware.  If the OneTouch III 600GB Drive’s firmware is revision 3.3.6 or greater, it has RAID 0/1 capabilities.  If the firmware is 3.3.5 or less, it can only be configured as RAID 0.  Use Maxtor OneTouch Manager to determine the drive’s firmware revision.

There are currently no plans to offer firmware updates for the OneTouch III Turbo 600GB Drive.

Note: Currently only the OneTouch III Turbo 1TB (Terabyte) drives provide RAID 1 (Mirrored) support. Configuring a RAID volume is a data destructive process. It is strongly recommended that you backup any/all data on your OneTouch III Turbo drive before proceeding.

1. Double-click on the Maxtor OneTouch Manager icon on your Windows Desktop. This will launch the Onetouch Manager application.  
   Note: If this icon has been removed from the desktop, click Start > Programs (All Program for Windows XP) > Maxtor > OneTouch > Maxtor OneTouch^T Manager
2. Click on the Settings button.
3. The Settings window appears. Click on the RAID Settings button.
4. The RAID Settings window appears. At any time you may click on the link "How do these RAID Settings work", located at the bottom of the screen to learn more about the offered RAID configurations for the OneTouch III Turbo Edition drives.
5. By default the OneTouch III Turbo drive is configured with a RAID 0 (Striped) volume – this RAID setting provides speed, but no redundancy in the event of of a single disk failure. To setup a RAID 1 (mirrored) volume, click on the RAID 1 – Redundancy radio button and click Next.
6. A Warning displays notifying you that configuring a RAID 1 volume is a data destructive process. It is recommended that you backup any/all critical data on your OneTouch III Turbo drive. When you are ready, click Continue
7. You will see a window stating that the RAID Setup is in progress. When the setup is finished, you will be prompted to format the newly created RAID 1 volume. Click OK to close this window. The RAID Setup process may take awhile to complete.
8. When the RAID Setup is finished, a window displays prompting you to format the new volume. Click Format to proceed.
9. To confirm that you want to prepare the RAID 1 volume, click Format.
10. At this point, the RAID volume is partitioned and formatted. This may take awhile to complete.
11. When the format is complete, click OK. The OneTouch III Turbo Drive is now configured with a RAID 1 volume.

Maxtor OneTouch III Video Tutorial – Performing Diagnostics From a Windows PC

This page will link you to a Flash Video that shows you how to configure a RAID 1 (mirrored) volume on your Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo drive.

Highlights

• User-configurable RAID solution
• Use RAID 0 for high performance disk striping or RAID 1 for automatic mirroring
• Up to 1 TB storage capacity
• FireWire® 800 for fast data transfer
• Oxford 924 chipset
• Pre-formatted for Mac; easily formatted for Windows®
• Available in RAID 0 only, and RAID 0 / RAID 1 (user configurable) configurations.

What does this mean?

Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo drives are shipped with 2 drives inside the enclosure. These drives are configured in such a way that the drive letter or volume spans both drives to make one large drive. This is known as RAID 0 or RAID Striping.

When data is written to this large volume, the data is "striped" across the two drives.  The stripe size is 64 KB. What this means is that a file written to the array is split into two parts, one for each drive. This translates into significant improvement in reads and writes because two drives can do the work of one in roughtly half the time. This usually means throughput of 30-40% higher than a single drive, and sometimes can be nearly 50% higher.

The file splitting is automatically handled by the operating system so it makes it a simple and robust solution for adding speedy storage or backup.

RAID is an acronym which stands for "Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks" which is not entirely accurate for the way RAID 0 is used because there is no redundancy. A RAID 0 volume needs to be backed up but is extremely fast.

The following illustration shows how data is arranged on the two drives in RAID 0 and RAID 1:

RAID 0/1 drives support both modes, requiring a reformat to switch the mode. The RAID 0/1 version of the OneTouch III Turbo is expected to ship within a few weeks of the RAID 0 model.