Customer Reviews

Iomega 33748 USB 2.0 1TB 2HD x 500GB Desktop Hard Drive

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I wish that people-reviewing products stick to that facts and keep the emotion editorialisms out. I DID NOT buy this hard drive after reading these reviews, later to find out from a friend who is a software engineer that he has this drive performing various functions. The result, the drive in a commercial setting has worked flawlessly. As far as "noise" all drives are and this is as a quiet [or if you prefer] noisy as any other. The optical drive in a computer combined with any mass external drive performing simultaneously is going to have noise.

I bought eight drives for my MAC NAS system after my friend's recommendation. I also have LaCie drives and Western Digital and like them also. Each has a different role and all are working very well; neither has been a problem. During constant operation my Iomega drive did not turn off or slow down any operations or any of the functions including movie watching and I review movies!

Bottom-line, it is an excellent drive that performs as well as, or better than, any other drive I have. Read these product reviews with a grain-of-salt. You would be better off checking a professional BLOG for electronic and computer advice. A T1 is a very large drive expected to perform a wide variety of functions. As long as it performs to the specs - you got what you paid for. Buy the drive(s) that suits your purpose of need. I originally didn't buy because of these reviews only later to buy this drive and I'm glad I did.

It was difficult to find a mostly positive review of a lot of the 1tb external hard drives out there, so for me, it came down to price. This drive is among the least expensive of the ones I looked at, but I was concerned about the noise that a lot of people said this drive makes. Sure enough, when I started using this drive, it made a lot of noise. Then I found a solution. I keep this drive in a vertical position (which it says you can do in the documentation) next to my iMac, and now it's as quiet as can be. Since I never move it, the loud noise has never returned. So, I would suggest operating this drive in a vertical position, and if it still makes a lot of noise, move it ever so slightly until the noise stops.

It's 1TB at 249- . I think i paid 229- when i got it a few months ago. That's just dirt cheap. For me, it's a mass storage device. It shouldn't be something you're gonna leave on and access all the time. It should be your backup. I agree it's a little noisy -- especially when first activating after being dormant. But I have found the MyBook's even louder sometimes. Anyway, it's cheap and it lets you store a lot.
My suggestion is if there is something you want to sit and watch for two hours -- like a movie via media center or something to your tv, copy it to you main computer (takes two minutes, right?) and they just cycle down the drive. Bottomline: this thing works. And I've had no problems unlike the MANY MAXTORS I've bought and had get inexplicably corrupted. I also recommend the MyBooks.

Iomega 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive Value Series External - Hi-Speed (33748)
It works, I guess that's what it's all about. The only complants are, it's a bit noisy, and there is no software for automatic back-ups. Otherwise it sure is nice to have gobs of storage space..

This drive makes a lot of noise, just like the other reviewer says. I have 5 or 6 other externals. This is by far the loudest (though they are all sub 300GB, except for my 1 TB Cavalry drive).

As a drive, it does what it advertises. It stores a lot of stuff. I'm just not thrilled with the loud buzz it makes during operation sometimes. Sometimes it gets worse. I'm watching a movie off of it right now and the drive was making noise like crazy doing something. I'm not defragmenting in the background, so I don't know why it's doing this, but pushing down on the top of it stopped the noise.

The top and bottom sides of the drive are aluminum, but the other sides are plastic. The other minus is that it is also quite bulky, a full 2 inches longer than the Cavalry CADB001U32 1TB 7200RPM USB 2.0 3.5-Inch External Hard Disk Drive. I suggest buying that instead.

It is a much better, more attractive and compact design, as well as featuring a separate on/off switch for the fan. The small size of the Cavalry and solid aluminum construction looks quite striking compared to this drive. I would give this product 3.5, if Amazon allowed half stars. The noisiness is a big minus.

ok.. so what the others say is true... its a bit noisy... not overly so and it wouldnt stop me buying another one since I can put it underneath the desk and that muffles the sound. Great price point, so far reliable.

I think previous reviews have stated that this drive is a bit noisy, I concur with that since its due the the 7200RMP vibrations. But, its fast and a lot of storage space for a low price. So far, I have it about 1/2 a year and its still working like new.

Pluses: cheap, a lot of space, fast(read/write/transfer), good looking case, a shut off switch in the back.

Minuses: big case (2 drives in there), long cords, hot transformer, noisy vibrations.

I would recommend this to anyone who is backing up alot of stuff on a budget and will not need to bring this drive around.

I expected this drive to be overwhemlingly loud based on the other reviews. Maybe I got lucky and recieved an ultra quiet one, because I hardly notice its there other than at startup. Very Happy.

After considering all the user pros and cons of this device, I went ahead and purchased this drive back on June 25th, and its main purpose was to be the main back up for my digital video and music collections. I copied over 100GB of data that weekend and it went smoothly, but towards the end I noticed that the power light went off mid file copying and the drive disappeared. I chalked it up to over working the drive, rebooted, and continued on with it only happening one more time. My eyebrow was raised, but no worries as of yet.

In July/August, turning on the drive would often lead to the drive starting to spin, but the power light going out. Turn it off and back on and it happens again instantly. Three or four times later, it stays on. This happens more than I could stand, but I already had over 200 GB of data on the drive, so it's something I can deal with as long as my data is safe once it gets there.

Fast forward to September. I finally digitize the rest of my music collection and start to copy files to the external drive, and it continues to shut off mid file copying. When I first got it, I could copy a few gigabytes at a time, but now it's struggling with folders under 90MB. Not once or a handful a times...EVERY SINGLE TIME. This is insane. I want to be rid of this device, but it is well out of the 30 day warranty. But wait, there is hope: I found out that the external drive just might have a grudge against windows XP, because when I hook it up to my Vista powered laptop, I doesn't shut off at all! Even though it should work with all operating systems that it's compatible with, I brushed that aside...I have a new glimmer of hope! But I still have a majority of my files on the XP powered PC. So I reconnect it to my PC, although I haven't decided on which method I was going to use to move files from my PC to the laptop to the external drive. Well yesterday, the drive made that decision for me.

I turned it on, and the main video folder is corrupted. Drive capacity shows that the bytes are still counted as being there, but the folder shows 0 bytes, 0 data. I Run scan disk, no errors. Defrag won't work. After trying a few more things for an hour, and after considering all the hoops I'd have to jump through to try and recover the data, I said screw it and reformatted.

So my thoughts on this drive are pretty clear; it was a waste of my $200. Of course I have DVD backups of everything I copied to the drive, so I'm not too upset about losing the data. But the fact remains that it failed at being a reliable device which I could use to quickly upload files back to my PCs. I got this to last for a few years, but it didn't even make it a full three months. Now I'm left with a $200 brick that I wouldn't trust to hold a collection of text files.

Don't buy this if you plan (like I did) to leave it on all the time (or often). I didn't have any problems copying, accessing or retrieving files--but it's far too loud. Think "sitting next to your wall AC unit" loud. And that's when it's idling, too; so if you're buying this as backup storage, great, but if you plan to leave it on frequently it'll drive you crazy. I, for one, returned it the next day.

It does look cool, on the plus side. But it's also the size of a rather large brick. Straight up, you get what you pay for, and there are better products on the market--spring the extra $50 for some kind of Western Digital or Seagate; it's definitely worth it.