Iomega rev 35Gb/90Gb Removable Hard Disk Drive Reviewed

[Jason Dunn]

http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/review.php?reviewId=404

"...Iomega are hoping that small businesses will do the same for their tape backups and adopt its removable hard drive based REV system. The concept is simple. Take a hard drive that holds 35Gb, remove the heads (placing them in the machine) so it can be thrown around the office and then imply that this is the next big portable and removable storage solution. In practice, luckily for Iomega the small desktop unit works. Connection is made through a USB2.0 cable and the spindle speed is 7,200RPM- meaning data transfer is fast and efficient. The diskettes- that cost £45 each- support the Windows UDF standard allowing you to simply drag and drop files on to them and the speed is almost as fast as a hard drive. The drag-and-drop functionality as well as the large hard drive-based format does provide its fair share of problems – mainly that it won’t work across platforms."

The review goes on to say that Iomega plans to double the size of the cartridges every 18 months and they are projected to hit 500 GB by 2009. I was disappointed to learn that the cartridges don't simply mount as a mass storage device - they required UDF support - meaning it's not quite as plug and play as a normal external drive. Still, it might be a good solution for project-based scenarios where you have a lot of big files that need to stay together, but you want to have different cartridges for different projects. I could see myself using something like this for video editing projects - one cartridge per project. What about you?

[Jason Dunn]

http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/review.php?reviewId=404

"...Iomega are hoping that small businesses will do the same for their tape backups and adopt its removable hard drive based REV system. The concept is simple. Take a hard drive that holds 35Gb, remove the heads (placing them in the machine) so it can be thrown around the office and then imply that this is the next big portable and removable storage solution. In practice, luckily for Iomega the small desktop unit works. Connection is made through a USB2.0 cable and the spindle speed is 7,200RPM- meaning data transfer is fast and efficient. The diskettes- that cost £45 each- support the Windows UDF standard allowing you to simply drag and drop files on to them and the speed is almost as fast as a hard drive. The drag-and-drop functionality as well as the large hard drive-based format does provide its fair share of problems – mainly that it won’t work across platforms."

The review goes on to say that Iomega plans to double the size of the cartridges every 18 months and they are projected to hit 500 GB by 2009. I was disappointed to learn that the cartridges don't simply mount as a mass storage device - they required UDF support - meaning it's not quite as plug and play as a normal external drive. Still, it might be a good solution for project-based scenarios where you have a lot of big files that need to stay together, but you want to have different cartridges for different projects. I could see myself using something like this for video editing projects - one cartridge per project. What about you?

[James Fee]

So is this the same as my 1gb Jazz drive? (well other than its a lot BIGGER) Unlike other Iomega products, I see this one doing very well. Our graphic designers always complain about DVDs not being big enough to handle their projects, this might solve it.

Looks like some Mac users will have to add a USB 2.0 card or PC Card (does anyone make a Firewire to USB 2.0 converter?).

[edit]Won't the Mac read "Windows UDF" format?[/url]

[Steve]

bahhh. I don't see this being flexible enough for myself. It's cool, and if I was strictly pc, then I'd get it... But for now, I wouldn't. I really like working with vectors and so most of my video and images are very small. But another problem is sound... I deal with songs that are around two to three gigs, and the materials that go into making them (synth, samples, effects) all add up to take arund 12 gigs. I transfer these for back up constantly... I get tired of it. Especially when one packaged set of materials for one audio piece is too big for a dvd.

So yeah, I'd like something like this. But not unless it was cross platform, sort of like my work.

[Kacey Green]

I don't like they way Iomega supports their porducts, they drop them too quickly or don't release the newer models fast enough to keep up with the market (thus their competion catches up and surpasses them)