Customer Reviews

Iomega 31774 Peerless USB 1.1 20 GB Bundle

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Well, ive owned this particular device for about a month, and i must say, i love it. not only does thing give you 20 additional GB of hard space, but its removable, like a floppy disk. Yeah, no kidding! you simply plug the drive into your computer, via usb, and vwoala!

i like it because i use my computer a lot, and i often have things to store, such as college papers, powerpoint projects, mp3s, games, etc...your average computer usage stuff. And this thing is great, because you (well, me at the moment) dont have to worry about running out of disk space, and if you do?! then press the eject button and insert another cartridge into the little placing unit, and once again, vwoala!.

I must say, before continuing, that youre looking at the price, and youre concerned, what do i have to say to that? well, that was what i did also. I bought the thing, took it home, doubting myself, plugged it in, still doubting myself, started to work with it, and no more doubt. its such a cool addition to your computer that you almost dont want to store anything onto it. haha, its true.

I have it hooked up to my laptop, i use it for school, so it helps me a great deal, it helps keeps my computer fast and fresh. speaking of which, the download and upload of information to and from this unit is unbelieveable. it transfers information as if were an internal drive, there is no cut back on speed, heck, at the bottom of the unit, there is a digital reading of how fast your information is being transfered. Whats more is that i can actually take this unit with me to the university library and plug it into computers over there. It's extremely small, it looks like a giant in the picture but its actually on 4 inches tall, 5 if you out the cartridge in, and about 3.5 inches wide and about an inche thick. man, its really compact, its more compact than my cd-walkman. I definately recommend this piece of hardware, its fast and easy to install, thus far ive had no problems with it, non what-so-ever, and its pretty sleek looking too, i mean, fellas it wont necessarily help with the ladies (my girlfriend almost ripped my head off for buying it) but its definately one of my top purchases of the year. and ive spent a lot of money this year...if youre thinking about getting, but not sure, con a friend into buying it, see how it works, and then come back and order your own, i gaurantee that you will.

if this review helped at all, watch for a couple more that will be coming out, one is regarding the iomega cd-rw external usb hard drive. and one on the xerox M950 printer/scanner/photocopier.

Comparing this drive with other portables, it makes more sense if you intend to buy several cartridges, which offsets the initial cost of the base station; you're moving between the same computers all the time, where the base stations will stay; and especially if those computers have different interfaces (USB and FireWire), in which case you can take advantage of FireWire where available. The price of the 20GB cartridge is also in the same ballpark as stand-alone portables (the difference between it and 10GB means no one will be buying the 10). Small size -- a nice carrying case comes with the cartridge -- and no wires or adapters means good portability. (The cartridges are of course proprietary, but other portables have a bigger hurdle: their discs are sealed inside, so if you want more, you have to buy a whole 'nother drive.) If Iomega can come out with 40GB and 80GB cartridges with competitive pricing, they might have a real winner. Installation and operation on Windows ME worked as expected. USB interface is on the slow side (the indicator on the drive sustained about 950KB/sec, occasionally and momentarily dropping to 600), so filling a 20GB disc would take... a while. But then, USB is limited to a theoretical 1500KB/sec. CPU utilization is 100% during reading and writing; don't know if other USB drives behave the same. Other minor problems: the drive is quiet, but the base station makes a relatively loud short whirring sound whenever the power is first applied. The iomega symbol in the middle lights up bright blue when a cartridge is inserted; unfortunately, it blinks annoyingly when the drive is working.

I purchased the Peerless, with 20 Gb storage, for general backup for my business Dell Latitude notebook computer and storage of personal files.

The Peerless installed very easily ... very simple install directions ... and quickly. I was backing my files up within the half hour. Absolutely works just like another drive on my system!

Kinda wishing I had more than one USB interface ... sharing with my digital camera memory card interface, Pocket PC interface and, now, Peerless. Guess I need a docking station now!

Well worth the $$ spent!!

I was one of the first people I know to buy these, and I still had to think long and hard about it. The price is a little prohibitive, but I've had good luck with iomega products in the past, so I went for it. It installed right off the bat, no problems. NOTE: you cannot use any other iomega products unless they are USB once you have installled this!!! I've swapped it back and forth between my desktop, my dads desktop, as well as my laptop, and its worked like a charm each time. Now you can buy the different bases, which means you can quickly grab the entire unit to switch between computers. But the real value of this product won't be realized (and this is why I gave it only 3 stars) until such time as they start releasing the drives at a lower price, or until they allow others to release compatable drives. $10/gig is well above market price for hard drives, tho I probably wouldn't blink at about half that. Over all I don't regret this purchase, but I'm still hesitant to commit to it fully as a backup product

I bought this Peerless backup system and some extra tapes in Dec 2001 from Amazon. I have been satisfied with the product. We use it to back up 5 computers every week. Recently the tape would not eject from the drive. AFter email discussion with Iomega reps, I determined it was not a software problem. I decided to buy an additional unit to use since removing the tape with a paperclip each time is a hassle. It appears this system is being discontinued. You can no longer buy tapes from the maker (Iomega)and the bundles are scarce. I think soon you will not be able to buy them anywhere. I like the system and have bought 2 bundles as backup. If you like this item, better stock up now.

There's a review of the Peerless system in the current Mac Home Journal (review's not posted yet, though). Gives it a 2 out of 5 rating. Basically, it says that the drive is far too costly to be economical, unless you're using a lot of cartridges for backups/etc. Otherwise, you'll be better served by self-contained external Firewire HDs than another proprietary format.

That, Iomega's disasterous customer service record, their continued problems with large-format external drives, and their recent financial woes, should all but obliterate the drive from anyone's wish list.

Sure it might work great. So did the SyJet from Syquest. And so did Betamax. Bottom line, keep it standardized -- CDs, DVDs, and hard drives are your best bet for backup and archiving, especially for off-site (I'm talking external firewire HDs, obviously).

This new peerless is easy to install and use, it's speed is fairly fast with USB 1.1 and will no doubt be even faster with USB 2.0 when it becomes widely available. A 7GB back-up of my entire Hard Drive took only 110 min with my USB 1.1 connection. As I understand it; changing to a firewire interface will require only the replacement of the base unit. The receptacle and Disks can be used with any base. I disconnected my tape back-up drives and put them in storage!!!

I have worked all afternoon trying to get the Iomega Peerless to work correctly. Numerous calls to tech support at Iomega were totally worthless. This product is worthless. It locked my computer up everytime I tried to use the Peerless drive. ReInstall of software, multiple Backup programs (including Iomega's Quick Sync) were unsuccessful. Even the old drag and drop method of copying files ended up in the "lockup" of my computer - I mean a "hit the kill switch and go thru the Scandisk each time event". I was very disappointed in this product. I had such high hopes that it would be my backup solution. Oh well back to the CD R method!!

First, you can get a standard 40 Gig IDE hard drive for less money than Iomega's 20 Gig disk. And you can get a combination USB/firewire (911 chipset) drive enclosure (converts a
standard IDE drive into a USB/firewire drive) for less than
the Iomega peerless base unit. Why pay triple or quadruple
the cost (dollars per Gigabyte) for something less standard and less compatible?

So, I just bought this (...), and I managed to get the entire bundle (base station, 20g drive) for the price of the drive alone. (...) Nonetheless, I was under the impression that I could slide the drive out of the base station, and with usb cable, plug into any other computer. WRONG. You need a new base station for every computer you intend to access the drive from. (...). I would advise that it is useful ONLY if you're going to operate it from a single computer. Otherwise, there are other products out there for less, that are far more useful.