- Easy-to-use: USB 2.0, just plug and play
- Secure: Iomega Protection Suite including Iomega v.Clone software via download, as well as anti-virus and backup software
- Stylish Color – Available in your choice of 2 colors: Midnight Blue and Jet Black
- Compact – under 3 lbs and just 7.3 inches long
Product Description
Great capacity with style to match! The Iomega eGo Desktop Hard Drive USB 2.0 provides a simple and stylish solution for all your storage needs. Ideal for adding capacity, this plug and play drive is available in up to 2TB capacity in Midnight Blue and Jet Black. It includes a 3 year limited warranty when you register your product. Plus, valuable Iomega Protection Suite is included at no additional cost (via download) with Iomega v.Clone software and Trend Micro anti-virus software. It’s the easiest way to save photos, music, videos and more!
Eliezer Kolatch @ 6:03 am
I decided to test this hard drive by using it as the primary hard drive for my PVR/media center PC. Allowing me to free up some space from my internal hard drive while also putting the iomega through its paces.
The pros and cons of my experience with the drive are below:
PRO:
1. Minimalist design and square housing make the drive easy to stack with other components and won’t negatively affect the aesthetic of your home theater or office.
2. The LED to indicate the device is on which is unusually bright, is situated toward the back of the drive making it less glaring in a dark room.
3. At 1 to 2 TB this drive is perfect for media use. Windows media center claims the 1TB drive, which I tested should hold 721.5 hours of standard def TV or 109.5 hours of HD TV. Or I assume, 50 hi-def movies (without extras).
4. When copying files to the drive, while recording TV, playback of TV stuttered initially, but then proceeded with smooth playback.
5. General playback was flawless, with no slowdown when playing HD content, and no indication that the transfer speed of the drive was not up to the task of acting as a media drive.
6. While not truly portable (you need to drag around a separate power cable and its much larger than most portable drives) this is small enough that you could take it with you on vacation, since it is about the size of a large paperback. Moreover while it is smaller than many other external hard drives I have used (for example it is half the size of a WD MyBook Essentials 500GB drive).
7. At around $100 the drive is a good deal, in between the prices for internal 1TB hard drives and external 1TB hard drives.
CON:
1. The only major problem I had was with the provided Power and USB cables. The USB cable was short about 3 feet but that’s replaceable so the problem is relatively minor. The power cord, which would be much more difficult to replace is only about 4.5 feet and as such really limits drive placement. In my setup I did not have enough cord to place the drive where I initially intended and had to reshuffle components to get everything to fit which was a big pain.
2. As I mentioned above it is not a true portable drive and as such needs an external power cord which is annoying.
OTHER DESIGN NOTES:
Speeds when copying files to/from the drive where at an average of 19mb/s or 1.14GB/ min , much slower than USB 2.0 rated speed of 480 Mbit/s. I will note however that my other external hard drive, a USB 2.0 WD passport showed similar speeds, and my guess is that this is a result of the speed of the drive in my computer and the external drives. That said, iomega doesn’t provide any precise information about the read/write speed of the drive.
Despite what another reviewer wrote the drive is not quite. A hushed but audible sound from the enclosure for the most part however this blended with the other background electronic noises and didn’t detract from my listening or viewing experience.
If you want a truly quiet drive you’ll have to go solid state.
The drive does tend to heat up, but only to a point that I would consider “warm” not to a heat that would worry me in terms of effecting the drive or other peripherals near the drive.
CONCLUSION:
The eGo preformed on par with the performance of most external hard drives I’ve used over the years. So what sets it apart is really the design.
If you’re looking for something to take with you on a regular basis, I would consider a smaller drive, perhaps the eGo portable. Otherwise this is a solid option, especially considering its relative portability and size compared to some of the competition. Also portable 1TB hard drives without separate power cables are expensive, or experience frequent issues (just check amazon reviews). So I think this is a good option.
Which leaves the one caveat, if you are going to have to put the drive more than a couple of feet away from the outlet you won’t be able to plug the drive in, and without power the drive is nothing but a rather expensive paperweight.
D. A. Dodd @ 7:15 am
Unlike many external hard drives, this one has a feature that is a must — an on/off power switch. Other externals I’ve tried, while reliable are a pain if you don’t want them running all the time. Since they are generally used as backup drives, they wouldn’t need to run all the time. Therefore you’d have to unplug the hard drive, either from the wall or on the back of the drive, which could be inconvenient if your workspace has limited room.
This one is also the quietest drives I’ve also used. Others would make clicking noises as data was being copied (not the click of death that signals a hard drive failure), but all noises with this one are very subtle.
Out of the box, the drive seems reliable, but that’s something I won’t know for sure until several months down the road. However, like with all external hard drives, don’t store your data on them and have them as the only source as they can fail suddenly. Always backup to CD/DVD/BluRay media as a primary and this as a secondary, if it’s being used as a backup drive only.
Sreeram Ramakrishnan @ 9:03 am
Overall, this is a great product. My frequent overseas travels has made me very nervous about data storage and some required redundancy. Plus, all the travels is also keeping my digital cameras quite busy. eGo not only provides excellent storage, but operates with minimal noise, never has displayed a tendency to “overheat”, and the file transfers are quite fast. To me, it is also very critical that my storage device can be taken on my travels without having to worry about power transformers. eGO fits that bill as well – it supports 100-240V input (you may still need a plug adapter, though).
Though the transfer speeds are good, it would have been great if the eGO supported the eSATA interface also. A very minor complaint is that I wish the base ‘holder’ that comes along with it covered more length than what it does now…perhaps they designed it to be able to hold vertically as well.
A prudent shopper should keep monitoring the prices – it sometimes drops by almost 30%.
Shevi @ 9:06 am
Well priced at under $130 (and even less when on sale), this 1 TB external hard drive is very quiet and easy to connect to a computer with the included USB2 cable. It comes out of the box ready for use with software for monitoring and backing up your files. It can be used on a PC running Windows or on a Mac. I had to reformat it to connect it to my Mac, but the instructions for doing that were clear, succinct, and easy to follow. (The instructions are available in 19 different languages.)
It’s great to have such a large capacity hard drive. I split it to appear as two hard drives: one I’m using for the Mac’s Time Machine backup; and the other hard drive I formatted as FAT32, so both a MAC and PC can recognize it and I can use it for data storage of all my multimedia files (music, video, and so on). This way I won’t overcrowd my Mac’s internal hard dive, and I can physically take my multimedia files to another computer.
When the drive is turned on it takes about ten seconds to appear on my computer, and there’s almost no noise when it boots up. You wouldn’t even know that it’s running, if not for the little light on it that informs you it is. The hard drive inside is a serial ATA Barracuda made by Seagate. There’s a 3-year warranty on it.
All in all, a great product that should provide plenty of storage for my files and help keep them safe from possible computer malfunctions.
John Benton @ 10:57 am
I’ve had this external hard drive for several weeks with no problems. I was glad to read that it has a Seagate Barracuda drive. It’s an attractive color of blue and silver and goes with my setup nicely.
It’s pretty small for an external drive and is quite quiet with no noticeable noise eminating from it. I feel no heat at all from it. It appears on my iMac desktop in about 9 seconds and seems to work well with Time Machine. I didn’t measure the speed, but it transfers files fast enough for me.
I had to reformat it for the Mac but that was little trouble following the instructions. I used Disk Utility which could make more than one partition, but I just made it one.
The activity light (which I like to observe) is visible on the rear side of the unit. It is not too bright, but might be in a darkened room. Black tape would fix that if necessary.
All in all, I’m very happy with the drive. I used to have a low opinion of Iomega from bad experiences a long time ago, but this unit has changed my mind.