Posts Tagged “iomega”

About 4 years ago I hired an assistant editor to log and capture footage for a documentary.  I gave her a brand new iomega hard drive and 40 hours of tape. About a week later she gave them back – all captured “safe” to the hard drive. Then she added, “oh yeah, the drive was making a weird noise.”

The end of that story is that the drive died shortly after I got it home. iomega support was responsive and send me a replacement drive, but I lost all the data and had to recapture everything.  I’ve had problems with the replacement as well but still have it. iomega’s never been high on my list but this incident put them even lower. I think its partly an enclosure issue and partly an interface issue, which may have been resolved in the newer product lines.  The “weird noise” she mentioned was actually the fan, which you can see in the picture as a circle at the back of the enclosure.  The fan rubbed against something causing a loud noise. Both the original drive and the replacement had this problem.  The fan also didn’t cool the drive enough as it gets very hot, and as we know heat is death to drives. 

What made the case appealing was all the connectivity.  But I think whatever interface they were using had some problems.  The USB was slow.  The power switch was useless.  It didn’t turn the drive on or off and didn’t have any click feedback.

Of course this model is several years old. iomega’s newer drives might be better, but in general I’ve not been happy with their designs.  Please comment about your experiences with this drive and other/newer iomega drives.  Was this an isolated incident or is their entire line sub-par?

OH, by the way.  This drive is for sale.  After this rave review, let’s get those offers in..