4. Documentation

The Signature Mini packaging ships with only a tiny booklet and no other printed documentation. For people who aren’t going to use either of SimpleTech’s two backup software options, this booklet is generally sufficient and explains how to install the drive as well has how to access the backup software.

For users attempting to rely upon the two backup software options, there are many resources at the company’s Website (http://backup.fabrik.com/) in the form of FAQs, software updates, drivers and product guides. Most of the guides and FAQs are accessible on the site in the form of PDF documents, but the files are large and proved difficult to load into Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. In fact, these files crashed our browser in three out of four attempts.

Once these files are opened, most answers to questions about software settings for ArcSoft and Ultimate Backup are answered within them. Nowhere did these manuals address the issue of Mac architecture incompatibility with the ArcSoft program, however, and we consider this a relatively large omission that we hope SimpleTech will soon rectify. The ArcSoft product is marketed as Mac-compatible within the Signature Mini’s small booklet — the online documentation should reflect the limitations of this software, as well as the availability of the Mac software update from ArcSoft.

Documentation Score: 3.5/5