Posts Tagged ‘iomega’

In this information age, data is perhaps the most important thing there is. But let’s face it. Storage devices are boring. Few years ago, manufacturers got creative with USB flash drive design. For example, 1GB Salmon Sushi USB Drive – So real you get hungry!!.

Beyond the fun factor, however, we often need to carry a lot more information than these USB flash drives can hold. Western Digital started stylish portable hard disks trend with their Western Digital My Passport Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable Drive WDMER5000TN (Real Red) series. Iomega upped the ante with eGo series.

The drive looks and feels a lot like woman’s cosmetic compact. In fact, my wife and I tried flipping it open. Surrounded in stylish chrome border and beautiful red finish, this is one substantial high quality design. This might strike as a nitpick, but perhaps the only design weakness is the blue activity indicator light. I would’ve chosen subtler, white glow LED found on Apple notebooks. The blue indicator light cheapens otherwise very stylish, high quality product.

The hard disk itself is very solid. Backed by generous 3-year warranty, this 320 GB hard disk spins at 5400 rpm. It’s formatted as a single 300 GB NTFS format partition. Mac users will need to format to HPFS+ or FAT32. It includes few security software for Windows you might want to backup, in case you are thinking of reformatting. The disk is very quiet like most modern notebook hard disks are and it connects to your computer with a bundled USB cable. The cable splits into two full-sized USB connectors in case your computer isn’t capable of supplying sufficient power. My iMac worked with just one USB connection, Dell Latitude notebook needed two connections.
Iomega eGo 500 GB

I decided to test this hard drive by using it as the primary hard drive for my PVR/media center PC. Allowing me to free up some space from my internal hard drive while also putting the iomega through its paces.
The pros and cons of my experience with the drive are below:

PRO:
1. Minimalist design and square housing make the drive easy to stack with other components and won’t negatively affect the aesthetic of your home theater or office.

2. The LED to indicate the device is on which is unusually bright, is situated toward the back of the drive making it less glaring in a dark room.

3. At 1 to 2 TB this drive is perfect for media use. Windows media center claims the 1TB drive, which I tested should hold 721.5 hours of standard def TV or 109.5 hours of HD TV. Or I assume, 50 hi-def movies (without extras).

4. When copying files to the drive, while recording TV, playback of TV stuttered initially, but then proceeded with smooth playback.

5. General playback was flawless, with no slowdown when playing HD content, and no indication that the transfer speed of the drive was not up to the task of acting as a media drive.

6. While not truly portable (you need to drag around a separate power cable and its much larger than most portable drives) this is small enough that you could take it with you on vacation, since it is about the size of a large paperback. Moreover while it is smaller than many other external hard drives I have used (for example it is half the size of a WD MyBook Essentials 500GB drive).

7. At around $100 the drive is a good deal, in between the prices for internal 1TB hard drives and external 1TB hard drives.

CON:
1. The only major problem I had was with the provided Power and USB cables. The USB cable was short about 3 feet but that’s replaceable so the problem is relatively minor. The power cord, which would be much more difficult to replace is only about 4.5 feet and as such really limits drive placement. In my setup I did not hav
Iomega eGo 2 TB

Stays put on the dash and is easy to adjust. Big enough that you can’t easily hide it but I like it.
Iomega 750 MB Zip