Customer Reviews

Iomega Portable Hard Drive USB 2.0, 160GB (33600)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I am a digital designer by trade, and I've owned seven different portable and external hard drives over the last eight years. I've purchased three Iomega drives, including this model, which I've had to reformat several times due to the drive failing. Of course, reformatting erases all the data on the drive, so my frustration with this product has been lengthy. All three of the Iomega drives I've owned have died within 12 months of purchase. Just about ten minutes ago my third and final Iomega drive, this one, started making a familiar clicking sound. I know that it is also about to die, so I hopped online to locate a replacement as fast as possible. I currently own two Maxtor drives and one Seagate. The Maxtor drives were purchased long before I purchased two of the three Iomega drives that I've owned, and the Maxtors are much more heavily used than the Iomega drives. Yet, all three of the Iomega drives are now dead, but the Maxtors are still going strong. I can no longer recommend any Iomega hard drive. After years of giving them another chance I have now sworn off of Iomega drives forever. I plan to buy a Western Digital drive. The reviews are good and the 120 GB drive (at the time of this writing) is only $89. Save yourself some frustration and don't purchase this product.

My headline says it all... it's TINY (about 3" x 5" x 1/2"), very smooth & quick, and cheap for it's size & capacity of 160GIG... I've got my entire computer backed-up now!... and so far so good. A real plus is that this drive requires NO electrical connection to run. I'm always hesitant about buying computer gear over the net... especially from third party vendors I'm not familiar with. But I trust Iomega and I trust Amazon not to have disreputable sellers. So far I have not been disappointed. Highly recommend this drive.

The drive's box says it has "DROP SHOCK Technology", but when my 1-year-old swept the (not-turned-on) Iomega drive off our coffee table and it fell two feet to the wood floor, it was permanently damaged and all my data were lost.

The drive may be convenient and large, but do not treat it as a robust storage mechanism!

Small, easy to use, good price at around 70c per GB of storage. Works fine with OS X, but note that no USB devices -- including this one -- are bootable on non-Intel machines. If you want a bootable drive and you have an older Mac, get a firewire device.

- Packaging: cardboard liner was crushed in shipment, but no visible damage to product.
- Size: very small and thin, conveniently fits in a shirt pocket.
- Accessories: comes with double-USB cord, allowing you to connect to 2 USB ports for extra power, and recovery software CD.
- Setup/Install: my Gateway laptop recognized it as soon as I plugged it in. No need for the CD if you just want to use it right away. CD installation of recovery software was simple.
- Function: comes formatted FAT32. First thing I did was re-format to NTFS for more efficient file storage capability and use of compression. No problems there.
- Power: can run off USB power alone, does not need AC power to function although it has a port to connect an AC adapter (sold separately). I did not need to use both USB plugs to make this drive function, which means the drive does not use much power or my laptop's USB ports provide a lot of power.
- Shock protection: Not willing to test this feature out yet. :)

- Summary: I am extremely pleased with this product. Have owned for a month with zero problems. Would purchase again with no hesitation.

Love this new drive. Carry it everywhere, and it holds a ton of information. Amazon delivered it right away, and at the best price.

Here's a review that is bullish on Iomega portable USB drives. It was written for the newer Ego drive which is a bit larger but in the same Iomega "family". Most of that review applies to this drive as well which I also recently purchased (now my 5th Iomega). You'll see it references it as a good buy in the review below (which is why I just bought it for my son):
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This is my fourth Iomega. First was a "Silver Portable" 40GB drive. Ran perfectly for over a year and I gave it to my son so he could finally back up his WinXP system. Then I bought a 120GB USB/Firewire "Silver Portable" and it ran perfectly for over a year and was just retired to my backup computer so I could buy a larger one, my first Iomega that's not a "Silver Portable". (Along the way, I also bought an 80GB Iomega Silver portable for my daughter.)

If you've read complaints throughout Amazon about the Western Digital and Maxtor and others regarding some very important flaws like running noisy, breaking in a few months, and not getting enough power from the USB port, then do consider this one. This drive runs very quietly and only draws around 100mA from a standard 500mA USB port.

You've probably read that it's important with Windows XP to format your USB hard drive using the NTFS file system and then set it in device manager's "Policies" tab to "optimize for performance". That's quite true and worth mentioning. You'll get best speed this way and really don't lose anything except compatibility with Windows 95, 98 and ME. What are they, you ask? ;>) Also, the drive comes with an 8MB cache which helps give it such fine performance.

Comparing this drive (the Ego) to my other Iomega Silver Portables, it's supposed to be more shock resistant but I don't plan to ever test that. On the negative side it is larger and cannot be placed in a shirt pocket like the others. It's just a bit longer, wider and heavier - no problem at all though for a brief case, a laptop's accessory compartment, or even a small woman's purse. It runs a bit warmer also. Not hot at all but I'm just spoiled by the other Iomegas which run cooler. It does not have rubber feet but is not especially slippery either. I'm more comfortable with things like this by placing them atop a piece of Rubbermaid non-skid rubberized shelfing material, cut to fit, but that may be overkill.

From the other reviews I've read including Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, LaCie and some others, there didn't seem to be another manufacturer that I would have faith in. Not to demean this drive at all, but if I were to buy it again or buy another for myself, I would definitely consider another "Silver Portable" for its compactness, lower temperature, and ridiculously low power draw from the USB port. At this writing, they are still available on Amazon but will be selling out in the near future. They are:

1. Model 33634 - USB/Firewire 120GB for $100 (I have this one already)
2. Model 33600 - USB 160GB for $80.

Finally, software. The drive comes with a license for some Iomega licensed backup software. Backup software is very difficult to trust, and usually you don't learn how competent it is until your hard drive fails or some virus eats you alive. Crunch time is a bit late to be disappointed by your backup software. I very strongly encourage you to take a hard look at Acronis True Image software. I have it as do some friends and it doesn't disappoint. Even works on a PC with RAID1 hard drives, if that means anything to you. Probably the only program for PCs that does. It even comes with a bootable CD version which runs slower doing the backup than the installed version, but can be very convenient.

I've run dry and this review has run long. Thanks for reading. Hope I've been helpful

Regards ... Sam

The hard drive is portable and does not need any external power source. It worked for me and hopefully work for others too. I am satisfied with the delivery and the hard drive.

I've had this drive now for three months. It works great. I back up my computer every couple of weeks and have had no problems. Its sleek compact shape, reliability, and quick read-write speed make a very desirable package.

The drive just stopped working after about 2 weeks of using it. It looks like it powers up, but the disc inside sounds like its stuck or something. Trying to navigate Iomega's website to see if there is a way to recover my data or at least get a replacement