Customer Reviews

Iomega eGo Mac Edition 500 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800 Portable External Hard Drive 34629 (Ruby Red)

5 star:		(81)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(40)

 

 

I got this portable hard drive recently to use for Time Machine with my MacBook Pro. Some notes and observations so far:

1) First off, the hard drive's ruby red color is not as bright as the Amazon photo. It's a darker red, which I prefer.

2) As with most portable hard drives, it is very quiet. Sitting a foot or two away from it, you should barely hear it, if at all.

3) This hard drive does not spin down after a certain amount of inactivity (unlike, for instance, a WD Passport, which spins down after 10 minutes or so of inactivity). You may or may not prefer this, depending on what you use it for. I use mine as a Time Machine, which backs up my hard drive every hour. I prefer the fact that it doesn't keep spinning down and spinning back up every hour (many argue that this is worse for a hard drive than simply leaving it on all the time, but there are varying opinions on this).

4) I wouldn't say the hard drive runs hot. It feels warm to the touch when idling all day like mine. However it may get hot if being used for constant data access. The only time it has felt somewhat hot is when I did the initial ~200GB backup of my hard drive.

5) This hard drive works well for daisy chaining. I have it connected to my MBP via Firewire 800, and I have a Firewire 400 external hard drive connected to the Iomega. NOTE: If you have the Iomega connected to your computer via USB, you cannot daisy chain a Firewire device.

6) Size-wise, it is a bit bigger than my (USB-only) WD Passport but it is still fairly compact.

7) The exterior feels like plastic, but the box says that the case is made from aluminum, so I'll trust that it is.

8) The light on the back of the drive is VERY bright. It actually projects light onto my wall. The color of the light may vary. I bought two of these drives from two different Best Buys... One has a blue light, the other has a white light. Either way, I found the light to be pretty annoying, so I simply covered it up with a small piece of black electrical tape. Works well.

9) Comes with a USB cable, Firewire 400 cable, and Firewire 800 cable.

10) One review noted: "No on-off switch, drive does not stop when computer sleeps, does not stop when computer turned off!". As far as bus-powered 2.5" portable hard drives go, I have not seen any with an on-off switch, although some may exist. If you want that, you will probably want to go with a 3.5" external desktop drive. HOWEVER, I think it is important to note that the Iomega WILL power down when the computer is sleeping or shut off. I was worried when I read this review because I thought the drive would keep spinning when I put my computer to sleep, but this is not the case. The only thing that stays on is the light. It will only turn off when you unplug the drive from the computer.

Overall, this drive works perfectly as a Time Machine. It is fast, small, quiet, not too hot, and unobtrusive. After the initial backup, you should barely notice successive backups (unless they are really big ones). The price is also great for a portable hard drive with three different connectivity options. The only thing I can't review is hard drive longevity... Only time will tell. Here's hoping that it lasts for a long time.


--UPDATE February 5, 2010--

Hard drive is still working extremely well for me as a Time Machine. A few new notes and observations:

1) A lot of people have been reporting that the top of their cases are detaching, which is pretty discouraging. I've been lucky, as the only problem I've had is that one of the front corners has come up about 1-2 millimeters. However, the top of the case is still in place and secure for the most part. I bought another one of these hard drives for my father, and the top of his case has not detached at all. I should note that I leave my hard drive on all day and sometimes overnight, whereas my father only turns his on every once in a while (when he turns his computer on), but it is generally turned off. I did buy my hard drives from Best Buy... Perhaps they received a shipment of units that were of better quality than what Amazon received?

2) This is a strange one... My hard drive runs SIGNIFICANTLY cooler than when I first got it. It hardly feels warm at all, even though it's spinning away all day. I don't really understand why, but I can't complain.

3) My thanks to A.W. Jester for pointing out that you must register online to get the 3 year warranty. I had missed this at first!

This product seems pretty hit-or-miss based on the workmanship. On the one hand, I'd have a hard time recommending it based on the other reviews I've read. On the other hand, I would recommend it based on my own experience. It's a great value for the price if you're lucky enough to get a good one.

Notice that you MUST register online to get the 3 years warranty! Don't forget this since
IOMega is hoping you will miss it in the user manual otherwise it is only one year.

Upon initial usage, transferring 250GB worth of data in about 4 different transfers, I found the hard drive edges to be temperature hot. I floated the hard drive to add air circulation at the bottom. Not even an hour has passed since initial usage, the top casing separated slowly from the body. I could see the glue stretching. I push it down gently to stick it back, but within seconds, it rose up again.

Immediately I contacted Amazon for an exact replacement. Today the second Iomega Ego came, and I repeated the same procedure, but this time floating the drive to avoid overheating. It did not help: Although the top casing did not separate as badly as the first one, it did pop up. With the first product, I thought it was just quality control issue, and it was a fluke; but now that the problem is repeated with this second product, I do not think it is a coincidence.

Iomega is an early supporter of Mac and Apple, and I like supporting Apple partners; but unless they design this better, I would not get this particular product. I travel a lot and in need of a sturdy portable hard drive. Wrapping this beautiful Ruby Red drive with a duct tape beats the original aesthetic intention of the designer.

This was my first external drive and it was as simple as I could imagine. I used the supplied Firewire 800 and connected it to my iMac and it instantly showed up in the finder. It offered me a TimeCapsule backup, but I just wanted to drag and drop some iMovie events and backup my Aperture library so that's what I did.
I have yet to download the software that they provide links and registration numbers for. Kinda wish they came on the drive, but other than that I have no complaints.

I have had this drive for a week. It is attached to my 2 year old Imac 24". It worked immediately out of the box. I used the firewire 800 connection to do a Carbon Copy Cloner backup of the existing drive before setting up my Snow Leopard Time Machine. The firewire connection worked well and was fast. A backup of the drive using cloning software can not take advantage of the speed of firewire. I immediately noticed that the bottom of the drive gets quite hot. I wouldn't want it to stay this way for very long. The drive rotation shuts down after an idle period but the power to the firewire circuitry does not and keeps the drive almost as hot.

When I shut down the Imac for the night the drive does not go down completely. The blue, very bright action LED and power stays on even when the Imac is turned off. I thought maybe something was wrong with the Imac and tried it on a less than one month old Mac Mini with the same results. In the morning the drive power (not platter rotation) was still on and fairly hot. I decided to try the USB connection.

The USB worked very differently than firewire. The speed for Time Machine is more than adequate. Doing a complete new 32gb Time Machine backup using USB was very little difference than firewire. The drive barely got warm. During sleep time the drive stops rotating but the light stays on and it stays just slightly warm. It wakes up in about 1 second and does the Time Machine backup without a hitch when called upon. My old USB would take sometimes a minute to acquire before saving the backup. This one is immediate.

In conclusion, the drive is very well constructed and solid. The firewire is fast and accurate. I would recommend that firewire be used to download big files on occasion and not left connected for a long time due to generating a lot of heat that can't be good for longevity. The USB is excellent, runs cool, and works as it should. Highly recommended.

Add me to the long list of folks who started up this drive only to have the enclosure fall apart within hours of normal use.

I bought it together with my new Mac Mini expressly to run Time Machine, which is an advertised use, and which of course involves continuous operation. Plug and Play with FireWire worked fine and my first backup (c. 60 Gig) took about 2-3 hours. As a longtime Mac user, though, plug and play doesn't impress me; a product advertised as portable and durable should be able to sit on a desk doing what it was sold to do and not disintegrate.

I got a free look inside of the enclosure; perhaps there's aluminum in the top cover, but it's held to the rest of the assembly with thin plastic tabs and glue, and though the drive was never more than warm to the touch apparently there was plenty of heat inside to break down the glue and weaken the plastic clips (there's absolutely no venting in the design).

As has been pointed out elsewhere, iOmega and their competitors don't make the actual drives, just the enclosures. This enclosure is poorly designed and shoddily made. The customer support is mediocre at best. Moderately cute looks don't compensate for that.

This is unquestionably the best drive for easy backups with Mac OS X 10.5. Time machine instantly recognizes it and file transfer is very quick with FireWire 800 on my new MacBook Pro 13-inch. Highly recommended.

Other reviews you can read about how pretty the drive is, I just want to let people know that it is a solid performer.

Drive was purchased from a retail outlet and formatted to NTFS for Windows through Disk management in XP (takes a few hours) in this time, the max operating temperature of 61 degrees Celsius was reached (141.8 Fahrenheit) which is completely normal, and not as hot as other's. The internal drive is a Seagate 5400.6 (ST9500325AS)and that is completely within it's operating temperature specs. It may feel "Hot" to some, but your internal hard drive (let's say if you are on a laptop) may be running hotter under a load; it is just not as conveniently to touch. So... some perspectives on heat are skewed in others' reviews.

Yes the 3 connectivity options are great, you get 29.67 MB/sec with USB, 41.33 MB/sec Firewire 400 and 64.33 MB/sec with Firewire 800. Notice - performance changes when more content added to the drive. For comparison, my system drive happens to be identical and tested at 76.75 MB/sec (serial ATA connection)

This item is only bus powered. so if you are connecting this through a USB hub, that hub must be powered. same with Firewire 400/800 - that is a major CON (hence the rating drop because of lack of additional powering options) - I was hoping to still use non bus powered Firewire while powering through USB (using only the power end of the included dual head USB cable) but that does not work.

My expresscard/34 adapter had to be powered with an additional power supply to run these tests - you can also use something similar to Belkin's Part # F5U526-APL.

I use the drive for music recording and it performs well running/recording multiple high resolution tracks - If I run into any hiccups, I will be sure to update you all.

The best thing about this drive is the variety of connections that can be used. Some reviewers say it runs hot, but mine does not, even when I ran a disk utility program that looks for bad sectors , and it ran for more than 24 hours straight. Sure, it is warm, but not hot by any means. The drive is quiet, and although red is not my favorite color, it it a nice looking drive.

I liked my first one so much, I bought a second one. I use one to hold photos when I am out in the field, since it is so much room, I have plenty of space to hold many shoots and work on the files, create slide shows, etc. I also store media files, podcasts, etc so they do not take up room on my laptop drive.All at firewire transfer speeds. The second one I partitioned and have a mac os on one so I can boot right from this drive in an emergency. I have all my application images and updates on another partition, so I can quickly install or recover anything I may have lost.

This is a great drive for people with multiple computers, you can store everything on the drive, and just bring it with you to the office, home, or out in the field. Rugged, quiet and reasonably priced -- one of the best computer purchases I have ever made.

I bought this as an Editor's Choice for Time Machine (Mac OS X) backup. It is incredibly fast on Firewire/1394, 7x my former 1394 drive from 2007 (2 hrs vs. 15 to back up 40GB). Dumb simple to install and use, too. Very compact, size of a paperback. No power brick needed.

But: it never turns off! No on-off switch, drive does not stop when computer sleeps, does not stop when computer turned off! Only stops when you pull its cable - a big big nuisance when used with a desktop computer - or if there's no power feed anywhere at all. The bright blue light is always on (dims, rather than brightens, when there's data activity). Thankfully it is on the back(!), where it can be used to eerie effect as a backlight.... Even while idle, the case stays HOT! The drive spins for a long time after activity has ended. It seems too hot to sandwich between books and it lacks edges to help it stand on a shelf.

I made a mistake, wishing to avoid another power brick. It is not suitable, nor convenient, when left attached to a desktop for hours on end, blazing away, hot and bright. However, this is a great traveling drive for laptops, compact, light, and fast, needs no extra power, and since you detach it for traveling you shut it off anyway. Learn from my sad experience:

¡Laptop, sí!
¡Desktop, no!