Iomega 32391 External USB 2.0 5400 RPM 40 GB Hard Drive

Rating:
Summary: A product that lives up to all of its claims
Review: I am very pleased with how well this drive works. If all you want is another drive, plug it in to power and a USB port and you have another drive. No setup required. Although the one-step backup is easy to work with, it does require about a five minute setup. With USB 2.0, it transfers data at 480 mps. It seems just like an internal drive. It lives up to all of its claims.

Rating:
Summary: HDD RPM correction
Review: I have been doing quite a bit of research looking into adding some storage for my multimedia system and Iomega is far and away the most cost effective solution I have found. Especially when you consider that you can take your information to a buddy's house for gaming or working on files.

The 40GB Drive listed here is NOT 7200 PRM, though. Iomega lists it at 5400. For a few bucks more you double the storage and add the bonus RPM. )

Also, note that the USB 2.0 has a higher burst rate (480 MB/s) compared to the Firewire version (400 MB/s).

gl hf (good luck, have fun)

Rating:
Summary: No effort back ups AND it worked!
Review: I purchased this drive a few months ago to use as a backup device for my Dell laptop at the office. Intallation was very simple and in just a few minutes the USB connected drive was busy making my backups. It's continued to work nearly transparently backing up my files with no attention required. And best of all when my laptop recently failed and it's hard drive was wiped clean I was happy to find all my backed up files readily accessible as soon as I reinstalled it on my repaired PC.

I'd give it a 5th star except for a few minor issues. First it's too big and heavy if you intend to use it as a portable drive. Also while the install documentation is adequate to quickly get you running the 2 software utilities have pretty poor documentation and only on the CD, no hard copy. The 2 supplied utilities, One Step Backup and Quick Synch are distinctly separate applications. At first I used the One Step back-up then began relying on Quick Synch to maintain my back-ups .. as I learned they don't work together as when I tried the One Step Restore feature it did not recognize my Quick synch back-ups. My files were intact however and were asy to copy back from the external to local drive with good old Windows Explorer. Finally the back-ups are slow (USB 1.1) and the software slows system performance at times when I'm running lot's of apps. All in all I'd recommend it and in fact am here buying another.

Update Feb 2002 ...
I just installed the same unit at home and now can share the drive over my wireless network performing automating back-ups from 2 computers. It's working really great. The only downside is the slight noise - the drive never stops spinning and there is no way to shut it off ..

Rating:
Summary: No Problems
Review: Just received my drive and hook-up was flawless. Instantly able to copy files from main drive to Iomega drive. Just like my old Iomega Zip drive, this drive seems to be rock solid. My only complaint is very minor, but I think there should be an on\off switch. I have not used the software yet, but the Iomega software that came with Zip drive is very user-friendly. They are one of the few companies who stick to, and perfect, the basics with a clean and simple layout, rather than try and give you some futuristic "cool" looking software to impress who?

Rating:
Summary: A so-so product
Review: There is nothing really outstanding or innovative about this external hard-drive. It comes withOUT a power switch on the case, therefore you'll have to plug/unplug the power cord for each use. Or, you can leave it on all the time and let the case fan spin continuosly. I'm not sure if the hard-drive itself powers down and stops; I kind of doubt it. Alternatively, you could plug it into a power-strip/surge-supressor/UPS and use that switch to turn on/off the power to the drive -- unfortunately, this is not a solution for me since I leave my UPS always on (because my cordless phone is plugged into it as well).

The lack of an on/off switch is compounded by the inclusion of an external "brick" (power transformer) about the size of that for my laptop computer. Why Iomega can't incorporate the power transformer into the drive case is beyond me. To further make this unit less portable, Iomega uses a standard 3.5" form-factor hard-drive (I believe OEMed from Seagate) instead of a smaller/lighter 2.5" form-factor drive.

The supplied 4-foot USB 2.0 cable uses a non-standard plug on the end where it connects to the drive. If you lose the cable, don't expect to walk into a computer store and pull it off a shelf. I had some problems getting my PC to detect the unit initially because the non-standard connector didn't get pushed in firmly. Once that's corrected, it showed up as a drive under "My Computer."

As far as performance goes, I tested it by moving a 130MB to/from an internal hard-drive. It took about 2 and half minutes for both read and write. When I moved the file from the internal hard-drive to this Iomega unit and immediately moved it back, it only took about 10 secs for the read operation. However, the time of 10 secs is very misleading because the file is essentially read from the system cache to the internal hard-drive and then removed from the Iomega unit.

I did not test the included backup software -- it's basically the same software that comes with Iomega's other products like the Zip or CD-RW drives.

If your primary purpose of using an external drive is to be able to conveniently take it with you, beware of the design flaws in this product, as well as other similar products by Iomega and manufacturers like Maxtor, Western Digital, etc. These companies should know better than to use cheap/bulky off-the-shelf 3.5" form-factor drives for such external units.