Maxtor Maxboost utility

Maxtor Maxboost Utility aims to boost the performance of Maxtor hard drives by monitoring and optimizing the storage speed. Improvements are acquired via algorithms that cache the data in the RAM before being written into the HDD.

Only usable by a small public

This utility is addressed exclusively to users that own a working Maxtor hard drive. If we take into consideration that the company that produced the component no longer exists, but was acquired by Seagate back in 2006, we can safely state that owners of configurations that include a Maxtor HDD make quite a short list.
However, with the hope that there still are a few Maxtor users out there, we took upon ourselves the responsibility of presenting a short summary of its features, even though we were unable to put it to test thoroughly.

Automatically detects supported disk drive models

From what we managed to gather, the utility can only be used with Maxtor, as well as Quantum internal ATA / SATA hard drives and sports, aside from the performance boost capabilities, an option to benchmark the HDDs.
The main window of the software is standard and easy-to-use; it doesn’t seem to pose a challenge to anyone, as far as understanding the features is concerned. Maxtor Maxboost Utility is said to have an automatic HDD recognition feature – this is only an assumption, which is re-enforced by user statements on forums. In other words, if you own a supported device, the application will automatically load it in the list.

Test read and write capabilities of your hard disk drive

The Benchmarking option allows users to select from two testing options: with all read / write commands activated or only with the last 1000 iterations. Results include a report on the sequential read / write average access time.

Several tweaking options available

Last, but not least, the optimization process can be tweaked from the Advanced Options tab, where you can set the total amount of RAM to be allocated for the cache. There’s also an option that boosts performance for audio and video applications, but this could result in issues with non A/V software.

In conclusion

To sum up, Maxtor Maxboost Utility is an oldie, so to say. Its days of glory are over since it addresses hard drives that are no longer produced, although the technology issued by Maxtor may still be present in some computers.