Customer Reviews

Iomega 120 GB Desktop Hard Drive (32659)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The Iomega HDD 120GB offers solid performance and a great bundle, and would be suitable for multimedia developers, those in the graphics, video or audio industries, power users, or simply anyone who needs to move a lot of data around quickly.

In my testing, I copied 10GB of files and folders from a PC to the drive in 8 min 1 sec.

The drive weighs in at about 820g (1.8lbs) though, so it may not be something you want to haul around all the time - but to be fair, Iomega does advertise these as "desktop hard drives."

If you want truly portable external storage products, Iomega also offers a range of lighter products that utilise notebook hard disks.

Pros: Fast; quiet; lots of extras.

Cons: Slightly expensive.

I highly recommend this product. I used the firewire connector and had everything set up in a few minutes. I use it to back up everything important; documents, e-mails, music, photos, videos, downloads, etc. The hard drive works flawlessly, and the Iomega Automatic Backup software is very simple to use. Just choose directories to back up then select backup methods (i.e., after files are changed, on a fixed schedule, etc.). This product also comes with Norton Ghost which I did not install. One nit-pick: the firewire cable inclued is only 3 ft. I needed 6 ft. and had to buy a replacement (6pin to 6pin, and they're not exactly cheap).

I did not buy this on Amazon but instead found it for $130 on another website. Unfortunately, I don't have USB 2.0, but the unit works fine and speedier than I expected on my USB 1.1. The only problems I had with this are the extremely bright blue led light that can get very annoying if it's in your line of site (i.e. if you use it with a laptop like me), and the slightly imperfect connections for the USB and power (the USB was a little difficult to get all the way in and the power felt a little loose). Otherwise it's a solid, quiet product that deserves the four stars I gave it.

I rushed out to buy this drive when 120GB was the largest storage you could have. I liked how it was light and therefore easliy portable (I had a notebook at the time).

When I upgraded to a desktop, I noticed some problems that I wanted to alert potential buyers to.

First off, my PC doesn't always recognize the drive as readable when I turn on my computer. Sometimes it will leave my drive off the "My Computer" screen altogether; sometimes it's labeled as "Local Disk" and when I try to access it, it gives me an "access denied" warning. I can correct this problem by restarting my PC.

My other problem is of an aesthetic nature. If you're not storing the drive in the same room you sleep in, there is really no problem. But if you're like me and have your PC in the bedroom--especially if it's turned on 24/7--you may be annoyed by the blue LED which shines a lot brighter in the dark that I imagined it could. But the more annoying problem is that once in awhile I notice the drive beeping and whirring. This somehow only manages to happen when I'm asleep, jarring me awake.

Other than those two annoyances, the drive functions perfectly (I have it connected through FireWire) and have had no lost data or corrupted files or anything of that sort.

This is the second product from Iomega that I have had problems with. I know, you think I would have learned the first time. I got this product yesterday. It installed fine. I backed up my files, installed Norton Ghost and created a .gho copy of my entire system. That took 12 hours. When it finished I shut down the computer and powered off the HDD. This morning when I started everything back up, guess what? No HDD. I have spent all day troubleshooting to no avail. Finally broke down and called Tech Support (toll call). After 5 minutes of speaking with me, mostly asking me my name, etc... they said, ok we will send you a new one. Unbelievable! No help, no ideas, no nothing. Just "we'll replace it". Obviously they are used to their products having problems. Then guess what? They are out of stock. They won't take it back because I bought it from Amazon. I got a little upset and so they transferred me to the sales department, saying that the sales department had a special return policy since I bought it online. The sales department had no idea what I was talking about. They offered to transfer me back to tech support and I told them to forget it. That is the last time I buy something from this company. You would think that if the only thing you do is produce and sell storage devices you could at least get it right. And if you didn't, you could try to offer some satisfaction to those that are extremely inconvenienced by your shortcomings. Unreal. Now basically I am out the $170. This HDD has all my personal data on it - it's not something I want to send back to Amazon without being able to clear out. I would really think twice, no I guess that would be three times before buying ANYTHING from Iomega!

PS - Did I mention the files I moved on to the HDD as an archieve? Won't ever see those again....

Remember the Iomega 2GB Jazz Drive? I used to need two of them because they failed so frequently. Looks as if the Iomega HDD is going the same way. First some positives - when it works, it's fabulous as long as you have USB 2.0 - USB 1 is slow if you have GBs of data to transfer. Second, some reviewers state that they cannot find the drive when they reboot their PC - just unplug the cable between the PC and the drive, reconnect it and the PC will find the drive. Now the bad news - these drives can be highly unreliable. My first one failed within the warranty. Iomega send a replacement that failed within three weeks. Remember the Iomega 2GB Jazz Drive? It had a removable cassette so that you could read your data on the replacement device (except that a faulty drive usually wrecked the very expensive cassette). On the HDD, your data are gone forever.

Yes, my HDD died, stopped spinnin, data go bye-bye. I rated it two stars because I fault myself for not backing up my backup drive. The drive does not work well with Firewire- over its short life it often could not be recognized by my PC (running XP). I would unplug it, plug it in again and that usually did the trick ... until it didn't. Now I'm scrambling to find my data from other sources.