Maxtor’s Terabox: 1 Tbyte of external disk storage, $329

I opened the San Jose Mercury News this morning, directly to the Fry’s ad (as usual). There I found a 1-Tbyte Maxtor OneTouch III external hard drive with EMC backup software selling for $329 (normally $399). At either price, the capacity and low cost boggle my mind as I think back 25 years to Maxtor’s first 40-Mbyte SCSI disk drives that I designed into Cadnetix pc-board CAD workstations. Maxtor quickly became the top provider of “high-capacity” disk drives, during a time when “high capacity” meant “more than 100 Mbytes.”

Seagate Technology acquired Maxtor at the end of 2005 and has thoroughly digested the meal by all reports. Maxtor is now merely a brand name under Seagate, but at least the name lives on. For now.