Iomega Professional Hard Drive, eSATA/USB 2.0, 750GB - 33945

List Price: $218.99 Discount Price: $201.99

Features:

• Device Type - External
• Dimensions WxDxH - 4.75" x 8.75" x 1.375"
• Weight - 2.78 lbs.
• Buffer size 8MB or greater

Accessories:

Aluratek High-Speed USB 2.0 External 500GB Hard Drive - Silver (ACBS350500F)

Customer Reviews:

'Hot' backup drive [Posted on 2008-06-08]
In summary:
Functional external drive, compact, decent form factor with included EMC backup software & USB/eSATA cables but bad design wrt. heat management.

Bottom line - give the alternatives due consideration, especially the Seagate drives, which comes with a 5 yr warranty unlike the 1 yr warranty with the Iomega external disks.

I bought this disk mainly because of the
- price point &
- Iomega reputation & my previous experience with other Iomega products

On the price point, this was much cheaper than the other alternatives in the 750 GB range, with the addition of the eSATA interface as a bonus.
On the quality front, I am disappointed mainly because of how hot the unit gets after about 30-40 min of continuous use. After a large backup lasting 2.5 hrs, the unit was hot enough to feel uncomfortable in my hands for more than a few seconds. The exterior of the disk is a matte finish metallic surface that may be compounding the heat issue. On the other hand, having a metallic shell will probably help to better dissipate the heat. A 3.5 star rating would probably be more accurate.

I have used only the USB interface which is painfully slow for large backups and have not had the chance to use eSATA as yet. Backing up 25GB over the USB interface took close to 90 min.

I tried using the EMC Restrospect backup software, which I must say is decent but generates custom backup files that can only be restored by the software application itself. What I prefer to get after a backup is a folder that contains each and every individual file that I have backed up. Instead, what I get with the EMC software is a collection of custom backup files (with their own unique extension) that are basically a collection of the backed up files. I must confess that I did not search through the help documentation to see if there is a way to change this to match my preference.

So far the disk has performed well as a backup medium but I am afraid that the disk may crash due to the heat it generates. I will probably end up buying a smaller, more reliable disk to backup my critical data or use DVDs instead just in case!

pretty good at the price [Posted on 2008-07-02]
very easy to use. Just getting hot easily. I have to turn it off after a couple of hours, just don't want to run the risk of overheating it.

Amazon has a very good return policy. The first one I got was somehow not functioning the second day I turned it on. I printed out a return label from Amazon web site and sent it back free of charge. Amazon sent me a replacement shortly.

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