Mini-review: Iomega USB/Firewire external hard disk

[Mercutio]

What a cute little toy!

Product is a sealed enclosure with a 3.5" hard disk inside. It supports both firewire and USB2 through a proprietary cable interface on the drive. I installed the drive in its USB2 configuration on a P4-1500 with an NEC-based PCI USB2 controller.

I'm fairly used to USB2 hard disks, and truth be told, this little guy was notthing special in terms of performance. It *was* auto-detected and automatically installed by unpatched Windows 2000 Pro. CPU utilization seemed lower than some other drive/controller combinations I've tried, never quite reaching 30% even with a full-on data transfer running in the background. This was my first experience with the NEC USB2 controller, however.

The unit is literally, utterly silent. There's a blue LED that turns on when it's connected to power. That's it. It's much quieter than any other external drive enclosure I've used in recent memory. It also does not appear to have any active cooling, which may be a good or bad thing.

The drive was preformatted and ready to use out of the box. Installing drives in USB cages is usually a hassle because they have to be fdisk'd and formatted before being installed.

Iomega's "Quiksync" software was magically perfect, installing a service that scanned suggested directories including "Documents and Settings" for changes and saved changed files at 15-miute intervals. Adding another element to the backup job was simple even for the piece of genetic drift who was watching over my shoulder. Even better, quiksync offered to keep the last 5 revised copies of any document in the backup folders.
I watched this thing do its initial backup. I probably had my initial backup done about five minutes after I walked in the door, and I watched through 2 cycles of interval backups, each went off without a hitch or complaint, even though some of the backup files were open.

This other surprise in the box was a full-version copy of Ghost 2003. I wouldn't complain about that one, either.

I bought this thing for a small business customer , and for its intended function, it seems to be a really nice product. It was certainly priced right. $150 for a USB2 drive enclosure + a 40GB drive + a legal copy of ghost isn't bad at all, especially not when the drive also has a $50 rebate.

 

[mubs]

And where did you purchase this marvellous toy from, Sir?

 

[Mercutio]

Circuit City. Every time I go in there I blow $100... sigh.

 

[P5-133XL]

I avoid Circuit City, Compucrap, etc - Too expensive; My local toy's are bought from Fry's. It has a much larger selection of toys and signifigently less expensive. I do note that Office Depot is the least expensive chain retail store here. Unfortunately they have far too small of a selection to keep me happy.

 

[Mercutio]

Sadly, Frys is a West Coast only thing. There's a Circuit City about 2 miles from my apartment, along with OfficeMax and OfficeDepot, so when I go out I usually stop in there before my expensive weekly stop at Borders.
I watch ads pretty closely, so good deals are never that hard to find. This Iomega thing just happened to be one of them.

 

[Pradeep]

OK I see the drive at CC. Tempting price. Reading some of the reviews they say that to use it via Firewire you need to buy the proprietary Firewire cable/adaptor doodad? Does that mean that out of the box it is USB capable only?

 

[Pradeep]

Anyone know of an external Firewire enclosure that supports >127GB HDDs? I've got a spare 80GB drive to put in one right now, but would like an enclosure that could run a 250GB when the prices come down. TIA.

 

[Fushigi]

It was certainly priced right. $150 for a USB2 drive enclosure + a 40GB drive + a legal copy of ghost isn't bad at all, especially not when the drive also has a $50 rebate.

Apparently it can be had for only $60 after rebate for the next week.

- Fushigi

 

[Platform]

Sadly, Frys is a West Coast only thing...

I've been in Fry's at various locations in California over the years. However, there's a Fry's here in Houston -- the biggest one I've ever been in. But, they have size-for-size competition in the form of Al-Tex.

As far as other chainstore type operations go here, there are also MicroCenter and innumerable CompUSA locations. Yes, there are Best Buys seemingly on every corner, but they are only good for small pieces of name-brand equipment or some software upgrade packages. I no longer even bother with Circuit City -- for anything.

As far as private places go, there are literally hundreds and some are very good on pricing and selection, though it seems many have also long-since slid down into pit of custom computer parts for the computing enthusiast (i.e. -- neon lighting for the insides of yer computer). As for me, I usually shop the small private places as I can get better-than-mailorder pricing on nearly anything. But, Fry's does occasionally have some really good deals, as I bought my Yamaha CRW-F1 CD-R/W unit there when they first came out for $20 less than mailorder pricing (at the time). When I bought mine, I picked it from a "mountain" of CRW-F1 boxes that they had built out in the middle of the CD-R/W section of the store.

 

[Mercutio]

Unfortunately, the basis for my familiarity with the local computer shops in my area is having to fix their screwups. I won't go near small retail computer places as a result (that and the fact that I don't like the 175% of wholesale prices that the stores here charge their customers... ECS K7S5A? That'll be $160, please)

Where I live, there are no Microcenters or CompUSAs, either, although those chains are both over in Fushigi's territory.

That leaves office stores, Best Buy and Circuit City - all of which are scattered liberally o'er the land. Circuit City is closest for me, and although it usually doesn't have anything like a selection, what it does have is either priced below anything I could get mail-order (120GB hard drive, $70 after rebate) or so stratospherically high I'd need a lobotomy before I'd hand over my credit card.

 

[Pradeep]

Of course Fry's does have it's Internet arm, Outpost.com, which IIRC you took advantage of when they had the WD 1200AB's for $109 without rebates I only got two but you got four?

 

[Mercutio]

Yup. But I sold two of them.

Fry's just sounds like a geek Mecca to me. Microcenter is bad enough, but the idea of a place with a "motherboard aisle" gives me happy thoughts.

 

[Pradeep]

Did you noctice that it is nearly impossible to find a store that has AB drives in stock?

Oh well too much chmapers for me, time for beddy byes.