Iomega eGo 320 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive 34616 (Silver)

Portable USB hard drives are becoming a commodity, from numerous manufacturers. I've used several from SimpleTech, Western Digital, and now this Iomega entry.

Compared to the WD entries, this one is very slightly larger (not enough to make a difference in any context) and weighs about the same.

The USB cable included is a special Y-shaped one...the second USB connector can be plugged in to supply extra power in case your USB port does not provide sufficient power to spin up the drive. My laptop's USB port was able to power the drive without needing to use the second connector. I did have one issue with the documentation here, since it says that the power port is the one marked with a lightning bolt icon. Neither connector on my cable was marked, so I went to the Iomega support site and asked a rep (using an online chat function). He told me that the power connector was the one with the thinner wire, which was easily found when I knew what to look for.

I do actually prefer this type of cable over the single connection one (without the extra 'power' connector) that came with my WD drive, but that's just me being a geek. My personal geeky 'Holy Grail' has always been to find a way to transfer files between all of the USB stuff I carry without using a PC. I have, in my tote bag, a Media Player from Archos, an iPod, a Kindle eBook reader, several thumb drives, and occasionally a camera. All of these use USB for transferring files. No manufacturer has, as yet, developed a really good way to transfer data between them, or to/from a portable hard drive, without using a PC. I did actually manage to do it with this drive, plugging the power cable into a 'Tekkeon TekCharge Mobile Power and Battery Charger' and using a 'Memorex TravelLink' to host the transfer. I moved an mp4 from a thumb drive to the Iomega drive I was testing, just to see if I could do it. The transfer was agonizingly slow (I think the Memorex, which was developed in 2005 and I believe has been discontinued, uses USB 1.1 speed) but it did work and I was able to play the movie afterwords off the Iomega drive. So, it's doable with this configuration, but it's not pretty by any means. I wish someone would develop a better way to do this...

This drive is formatted for NTFS. For portable drives, I tend to prefer using FAT32 since even nowadays I occasionally run across a software or hardware interface that can't use NTFS. I went to Iomega's support site and did a search on FAT32, which led me to a downloadable application that easily reformatted the drive as I needed.

All in all, the drive is nice. It performed silently and quickly when plugged into my laptop and it's light enough to carry around. Given that it has a better (IMHO) cable than others, if the price is equivalent I'd buy this one without hesitation.

Iomega's eGo 500GB portable USB HDD has been redesigned. When you purchase, make sure you are buying the new version.

I bought this portable HDD specifically to back up my iTunes directory, which is approaching 300GB. I also own another Iomega 500 GB portable HDD, and when I ordered this one I thought I was getting another identical unit. This one has been updated, and apparently for the better. This one is shaped like a slightly large deck of cards rather than as a whiskey flask configuration like the older model. It also has nice little rubber feet. But the big improvement seems to be that it is somewhat thriftier regarding whether it could draw sufficient power from the USB ports. This unit easily functioned in one of my computers in which the USB port was insufficient to power the earlier model. I do not know if this is a quirk or whether Iomega improved the design.

Further substantiating the theory that this unit is redesigned to be more power-efficient is the fact that it runs much cooler than my earlier model. I mean hugely cooler. I have moved about 400GB of data onto this unit, and it is barely warm above room temperature. Hard to believe that this does not represent a significantly better re-engineering of the drive.

Installation could not have been easier--there wasn't any. The unit came pre-formatted for NTFS and I simply plugged it into my Windows 7 machine and it was immediately recognized. I renamed the unit "Red Bounty" by right-clicking "properties" and within 30 seconds I was backing up iTunes.

Highly recommended.

The Good:

This drive is very flat (thin) and has the approximate dimensions of a thin mid-size ladies' wallet. For me, it has the perfect size to take along on the road. I have other portable drives, such as the Seagate FreeAgent, a SimpleTech and several Western Digital Passports but in terms of portability I like the eGo best. The color red is stylish and although glossy not too prone to visible fingerprints. The rubberized feet on the bottom prevent the eGo to slide around the desk. All in all a good feel.

Setup was very easy, nothing to it at all. It worked right out of the box as all USB external drives should: Plugged the cable into the device, the other end into a USB port on my laptop and that was it. The drive does not come with an external power supply, it only has a dual-USB cable to plug into two USB ports when the power coming from one isn't enough. For my Dell XPS M1330 it worked with one but you might be out of luck if operating the drive with an older laptop since the eGo has no power plug for an external adapter.

The Not So Good:

The drive was very quiet in the beginning, actually inaudible. However, after I had (very slowly and gently!) picked it up during operation and held it at an angle (again very gently), it began making disconcerting clicking noises and quit the data transfer that was in progress. The blue light indicating operations simply went out and nothing happened anymore. I had to unplug and reconnect to get it to operate again. After that, it was audible and on occasion made these weird fast clicking and knocking sounds until the blue light went out again, and rapid clicking could be heard. After a few moments the blue light came back on but it stayed steady which means it is connected but not operating. Naturally I do not like that... Especially not after operating it only for roughly 40 minutes total and the manufacturer's claim that this drive can survive a 51" drop. Or does it only do that when it was not operating at the time?

Several more attempts to copy a large 25 GB folder with subfolders failed, I was never once successful. In every instance the drive quit operating in the middle of it. Also I noticed that even when it copied something, subfolders remained empty. On the surface everything looked ok but the folders had no content. I would get a message saying that the file could not be found and that was it. Only disconnecting/reconnecting and restarting the copy process would help in these situations - until it stopped working again. BTW, a drive error check revealed no problems so I am at a loss as to what is causing this behavior.

Summary:

I am not sure I would trust important data to this drive after observing this behavior. Maybe it is just a lemon since I have read several favorable reviews of this drive but as of this moment I am rather suspicious of its reliability. Too bad because I liked the drive's design and speed. But this is the second Iomega drive I own that has not impressed me in terms of reliable operations so maybe I will just stay away from the brand in the future.