Iomega 160GB External Network Hard Drive

by Iomega

Product Details

• Item Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0002AAR9M
• Item model number: 33087
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 22, 2004

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The new wireless compatible Network Hard Drive gives you up to 160GB of storage space for your home or small office network. Without adding the cost and complexity of a server, you can now share and store your critical files, photos, music and video from ANY standard or wireless computer on the network. Installation is easy, just plug it in and share your files. Plus, with touch-free Iomega Automatic Backup software included, your important files can be saved automatically. Just customize your backup settings and the software does the rest. Simply drag and drop to restore.

Features and Benefits

• Large portable storage device
• Wireless networking
• Automatic backup software
• Additional software included
• Easy to install and use

Product Description

Includes: external power supply, 6 ft. Ethernet cable, Iomega Discovery Tool (PC/Mac), Iomega Automatic Backup PC (4 seat license), MusicMatch Jukebox (PC), Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 Starter Edition (PC). Iomega 160GB External Network Hard Drive - This external hard drive is designed to let you easily add additional hard drive space to all of your networked computers at once! Simply connect it to any available 10/100 Ethernet port on your network, and start taking advantage of high speed data transfer rates, and 160GB of extra storage space! 9ms Average Seek Time 7200 RPM

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Save Your Money for Another Drive, June 10, 2005

By 

Chris Harrison (Augusta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Iomega 160GB External Network Hard Drive (Personal Computers)

I've owned the Iomega 160Gb External Network Hard Drive for nearly 6 months now. The appeal of having storage directly on the network really appealed to me at the time, and this drive was 1) affordable, and 2) had ample storage available for storing my data.

I assumed a couple of things incorrectly with this drive before I bought.

I assumed it was configurable (i.e. that I could change it's workgroup settings, or add it to a domain, etc.) I was wrong. It stays in WORKGROUP. There is no changing this.

I assumed it would be plug and play. No dice there either. Several WinXP machines on my work network weren't able to see the drive when browsing the Windows Network, nor were they able to use the Iomega Discovery Tool to find the drive. I ended up having to assign a static IP to the drive and setup shares to the IP on the computers that had problems accessing it.

I assumed it would be relatively fast. I was wrong. Copying files takes time. Backups are MURDER. Over the past half a year I've amassed about 100Gb of data on the drive. I've tried backing this drive up several times. After waiting on files to copy for FIVE DAYS, I figured it just wasn't going to happen.

I assumed I could remove it from our network and easily plug it into other network configurations. Nope, wrong again. I can't get the other networks to see the drive via IP, via Iomega Discovery, etc.

My recommendation on this drive is: don't buy it. Get a drive that some sort of secondary port (USB/Firewire/etc). Ethernet is way too slow when transferring 100+Gb of Data and this drive lacks the configurability most would need to make good use of it. I've never been disappointed with an Iomega product before. I guess there is a first time for everything...

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The WV Bug of Hard Drives, September 13, 2005

By 

P. Zdanowicz (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Iomega 160GB External Network Hard Drive (Personal Computers)

I purchased this hard drive to be a shared drive on a small network. As a network drive, the Iomega drive links seamlessly and easily with both the Macs and the PCs on the network. Setup was very simple and straight forward. Files are dragged and dropped easily in explorer and backups work well with IBM backup software installed my PCs.

But be warned about a few serious limitations. This drive does NOT work well with Macs. Although the drive docks onto the desktop easily, back-ups are extremely slow (like 3 DAYS to back-up 5 GB!!!). It seems that what slows the file transfers is the number of files being transfered, not the size of the files. Small files zipped into larger files transfer fairly quickly... The Mac also badly misreads the size of files on the drive... And there is no backup sotware on the installation CD for Macs (there is software for PCs).

Also note that there is no way to set permissions on the drive. This means that all files and folders on the drive are open to each user on the network. Iomega says that this will change in the future... So if you want to secure your files from other users, you'll need to use software to encript or password protect specific files. Also, if your newtork is connected to the Internet, you'll need to put the drive behind a firewalled router because the drive has no firewall of its own.

So, as a basic network drive for a group of PCs, this drive is good. But if you have it connected to the Internet, use Macs or are concerned with privacy, do not buy this drive.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good for back-up information., August 15, 2005

By 

R. Pedraza (McAllen, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Iomega 160GB External Network Hard Drive (Personal Computers)

I have a couple of laptops where I have stored a lot of information, and music and this extra drive connected to the router works very well. Perhaps the automatic backup program that comes with the Network HD need some improvement, like take the names of the files as is, because when you have a file name with simbols on it, the program refuses to recognize it, and every time that wants to make an upgrade of the back-up the program tells that cannot find the file. Also, the sound of the disk drive it's a little annoying when you have the drive so close to your working area, because of the high frequency of the rpm's of the disk. But Iomega has been gaining a good reputation for making this kind of storage devices, so I found it very helpful.