At just over 4 inches long, the super-compact, lightweight Iomega Prestige Portable Hard drive, Compact Edition, is perfect to carry in your pocket, back-pack or laptop bag It requires no external power supply - just plug it and go With the Drop Shock feature, the Prestige Portable Hard Drive is rugged enough to safely store data for travel environments It also includes Iomega Protection Suite software with Trend Micro Internet Security (1 year subscription), Iomega QuikProtect, EMC Retrospect Express Backup software, and MozyHome Online Backup service to protect your data and your computer (software available via download)
Product Description
Iomega Prestige Portable Hard Drive Compact Edition - hard drive - 500 GB - Hi-Speed USB
Type
Hard drive - external
Dimensions (WxDxH)
8 cm x 11 cm x 1.6 cm
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I've only had the 500GB Iomega portable Hard drive for a month, so I obviously cannot comment on its expected, lifetime. I got it "up and running" fairly quickly - only one problem. I thought it came pre-formatted - but it wasn't formatted. My computer couldn't even "see" the unformatted drive. I thought I had a dud - until I did a bit of research and found out how to force the computer to see it. It then had to be formatted - takes a long time to format 500GB! But everything else then "ticks all the boxes". It's powered off the USB connection - so I'm saved all the agro of lugging around and plugging in a power supply. The lead has two USB plugs at "the computer end" in case one USB outlet can't supply enough power, but I find that one plug is sufficient. I store videos on it - it's far smaller, more convenient (and cheaper) than the approx 100 DVDs I would otherwise need - and I just select the one I want off the directory. I lug it round in my rucksack (with my lap top) so it isn't always treated very gently - seems to take it. And its soooo small!! My laptop will play videos directly off the Iomega over the USB link; I don't have to copy the file back onto the computer's disc (This may depend on the speed of the the computer and an individual's USB link - and I haven't tried HD).
Other than my start-up and formatting experience (hence only 4 stars) its excellent.
Had to buy this one after buying a WD Passport Essential SE and finding out that the "WD Smartware" ruins that drive by making it incompatible with several programs / environments. This drive suffers from none of those problems. Everything works fine and the extra software is downloadeable. You only install it / use it if you want. That's the way it should be, not like the WD which forces you into having unremovable software on your pc. This drive also worked fine with my Sony PS3, after formatting it into FAT32. It accepted a 500GB FAT32 formatting, unlike the WD Passport which (after crashing several partitioning programs) ended up accepting only a 200 GB FAT32 partition (God knows why). The special "double USB" connector for getting extra power in the case of low current USB's sounds like a good idea, although up to now it has worked fine with only one USB connected.
HISTORY ------- My main PC is an elderly laptop, still running XP Home SP3, left in a fixed set-up at home with an external monitor & keyboard. Fortunately, when I got it I got quite a high hardware spec and it still runs all the apps I need. However the original 80GB HDD fitted was getting full, and a couple of years ago I added a 250GB Maxtor USB drive to it. Recently the Maxtor was also reaching practical limits of storage so I invested in this Iomega 500GB USB HDD.
APPEARANCE ---------- Wow, what a change in a couple of years! Drive for drive the Iomega must be about half the length, height and width of the Maxtor - in other words about 1/8th the volume and probably less than 1/10th the weight. For double the capacity. And that's not even counting the Maxtor power supply! So my initial reactions out of the box for the Iomega were very favourable. OK, the Maxtor was a metal case which is where a lot of the weight probably came from. The Iomega is a metallised plastic to look like dark-grey brushed aluminium, but in my usage it doesn't get any physical stress or knocks anyway. Small point in the Iomega's favour: the drive active LED on the Maxtor was an annoying intensity and shade of blue; I find the smaller blue-white indicator on the Iomega much less distracting by comparison.
SPEC ---- It says 500GB and no, you don't get 500GB, you get 465GB or thereabouts. So what? I don't think we'll ever get disk manufacturers to accept this issue. Yes, they are right by all the scientific and engineering and SI definitions of what the Giga- prefix means: 10^9. And yet, by any Windows-based measure Giga- is used to mean 2^30. And there's a difference of nearly 7.5% between the two values. Annoying though it may be, we just have to accept it I suspect. I was delighted to see the drive had no installed software on it. I'd spotted a few other drives that offered free backup software, or free anti-virus, or free something else. No, thank you very much. I've got my system well set up with regular back-up routines, security and all the other bits and pieces I need. If I want software I buy software. If I want hardware I expect to buy hardware.
PERFORMANCE ----------- I plugged the drive in to one USB port (the supplied cable has two full-size USB plugs at one end in case your specific PC or netbook doesn't provide adequate power through a single USB port) and it powered up and was recognised without problem. Despite the comments of a couple of other reviewers about this being slow I really can't complain. I ran a disk test utility on it first thing to see what the transfer speed was and it was as good as I've seen over USB 2.0. Absolutely no complaints. I then copied the best part of 200GB of data to it in a single sweep (thumbs up for TeraCopy freeware - recommended!). Despite running hard and constantly for several hours the little drive was very comfortably cool. That was a surprise - I had expected a high-density package like this would get at least warm. So far, in all activities it has behaved just as you want a disk to behave - you don't even remember it's there. I may adopt the idea of another reviewer about sticking small rubber feet on one face of the drive to stop it being slid around a polished surface too easily - nice idea, simple solution.
SUMMARY ------- What are you waiting for? Go get one, or two. I'm seriously considering getting some more for myself.
