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CNET editors' rating:
3.5 stars
Very good
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Product summary
The good: Super capacious; fast FireWire 400/800 performance.
The bad: Pricey; sluggish USB 2.0 performance with large files.
The bottom line: Iomega's external hard drive has gobs of room and is an excellent choice for FireWire 400 and 800 users, but its USB performance is disappointing.
Specifications: Compatibility: PC, Mac; Connector type: 6 pin FireWire, 9 pin FireWire 800; Hard drive size: 400 GB; See full specs
See all products in the Iomega External Hard Drive with Triple Interface series
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 03/25/2005
- Released on: 12/01/2004
The Iomega HDD (the shortened name is lettered on the drive's front panel) looks like the Darth Vader of hard drives. The drive's dark-charcoal top sets off a raised silver Iomega logo, and its sides and face are shiny black. A blue power light is situated about three-quarters down the length of the top-right edge, just above and in front of the drive's cooling fan. The back is home to the power button, an AC jack, a USB 2.0 port, a FireWire 400 port, and two FireWire 800 ports. A Kensington lock port accentuates the left side.
The Iomega HDD is about average size for an external 5.25-inch desktop enclosure: 7.75 inches by 4.75 inches by 1.6 inches (LWH). It makes for an imposing brick at 2.62 pounds (we looked at a 400GB model), though the weight is a reflection of the drive's large capacity and the enclosure's sturdy construction. Smaller capacities--160GB and 250GB--are also available.
The Iomega HDD draws too many watts to run off of bus power, so Iomega provides an AC adapter, along with USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 cables; oddly, the package lacks a FireWire 400 cable. To take advantage of the FireWire 800 capability, you'll also need either a new high-end Mac or a FireWire 800 adapter card, such as the Adaptec FireConnect 8300 or the Belkin FireWire 800 PCI (we used the Belkin for testing). The FireWire 800 capability is great for stacking drives in an external RAID setup where FireWire 800's superior bandwidth can really make a difference. You'll need RAID software or a RAID card that supports external drives to do this.
But you might want to hold off on that expenditure for a while if you intend to run the Iomega HDD alone. In our informal hard drive tests, the Iomega drive performed in an identically spectacular fashion on both FireWire 400 and 800, taking only 3 minutes, 11 seconds to complete our informal 400MB folder and 1.9GB file read and write tests--10 to 21 seconds faster than the LaCie Triple Interface with FireWire 800 and 400.
Continue reading- See more CNET content tagged:
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
"A defective hard drive backed by the worst customer service I have experience in years."
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