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Technical Details
Capacity: 500 GB | Color: Ruby Red
- Stylish colors - Available in Ruby Red, Midnight Blue and Silver
- Rugged - Perfect for travel environments, the Drop Guard feature protects the drive when dropped up to 51 Inches
- Secure - Receive a full suite of protection solutions when you purchase USB 2.0 eGo Hard Drives!
- 3 Year Warranty - with product registration
Product Details
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Product Description
Capacity: 500 GB | Color: Ruby Red
Take files anywhere in style with the Iomega eGo Portable Hard Drive USB 2.0 with Protection Suite. Sporting a sleek aluminum enclosure, the eGo is the perfect companion to your laptop or netbook computer. Plus, the Iomega Drop Guard feature protects the drive when dropped up to 51-Inch (40% above the average!) so you can be confident your portable hard drive is rugged! Iomega Protection Suite is a comprehensive collection of valuable software to protect your data and computer that includes McAfee VirusScan Plus, EMC Retrospect Express Backup software (system backup), Iomega QuikProtect (file-level backup), and MozyHome Online Backup service. This sofware is included free with your Iomega product purchase and available via easy download. Available in 3 colors (Ruby Red, Midnight Blue, and Silver) and up to 500GB capacity, the eGo is protected by a 3-year limited warranty! (registration required for extended warranty)
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
67 of 70 people found the following review helpful
Portable USB hard drives are becoming a commodity, from numerous manufacturers. I've used several from SimpleTech, Western Digital, and now this Iomega entry.
Compared to the WD entries, this one is very slightly larger (not enough to make a difference in any context) and weighs about the same.
The USB cable included is a special Y-shaped one...the second USB connector can be plugged in to supply extra power in case your USB port does not provide sufficient power to spin up the drive. My laptop's USB port was able to power the drive without needing to use the second connector. I did have one issue with the documentation here, since it says that the power port is the one marked with a lightning bolt icon. Neither connector on my cable was marked, so I went to the Iomega support site and asked a rep (using an online chat function). He told me that the power connector was the one with the thinner wire, which was easily found when I knew what to look for.
I do actually prefer this type of cable over the single connection one (without the extra 'power' connector) that came with my WD drive, but that's just me being a geek. My personal geeky 'Holy Grail' has always been to find a way to transfer files between all of the USB stuff I carry without using a PC. I have, in my tote bag, a Media Player from Archos, an iPod, a Kindle eBook reader, several thumb drives, and occasionally a camera. All of these use USB for transferring files. No manufacturer has, as yet, developed a really good way to transfer data between them, or to/from a portable hard drive, without using a PC. I did actually manage to do it with this drive, plugging the power cable into a 'Tekkeon TekCharge Mobile Power and Battery Charger' and using a 'Memorex TravelLink' to host the transfer. I moved an mp4 from a thumb drive to the Iomega drive I was testing, just to see if I could do it. The transfer was agonizingly slow (I think the Memorex, which was developed in 2005 and I believe has been discontinued, uses USB 1.1 speed) but it did work and I was able to play the movie afterwords off the Iomega drive. So, it's doable with this configuration, but it's not pretty by any means. I wish someone would develop a better way to do this...
This drive is formatted for NTFS. For portable drives, I tend to prefer using FAT32 since even nowadays I occasionally run across a software or hardware interface that can't use NTFS. I went to Iomega's support site and did a search on FAT32, which led me to a downloadable application that easily reformatted the drive as I needed.
All in all, the drive is nice. It performed silently and quickly when plugged into my laptop and it's light enough to carry around. Given that it has a better (IMHO) cable than others, if the price is equivalent I'd buy this one without hesitation.
Compared to the WD entries, this one is very slightly larger (not enough to make a difference in any context) and weighs about the same.
The USB cable included is a special Y-shaped one...the second USB connector can be plugged in to supply extra power in case your USB port does not provide sufficient power to spin up the drive. My laptop's USB port was able to power the drive without needing to use the second connector. I did have one issue with the documentation here, since it says that the power port is the one marked with a lightning bolt icon. Neither connector on my cable was marked, so I went to the Iomega support site and asked a rep (using an online chat function). He told me that the power connector was the one with the thinner wire, which was easily found when I knew what to look for.
I do actually prefer this type of cable over the single connection one (without the extra 'power' connector) that came with my WD drive, but that's just me being a geek. My personal geeky 'Holy Grail' has always been to find a way to transfer files between all of the USB stuff I carry without using a PC. I have, in my tote bag, a Media Player from Archos, an iPod, a Kindle eBook reader, several thumb drives, and occasionally a camera. All of these use USB for transferring files. No manufacturer has, as yet, developed a really good way to transfer data between them, or to/from a portable hard drive, without using a PC. I did actually manage to do it with this drive, plugging the power cable into a 'Tekkeon TekCharge Mobile Power and Battery Charger' and using a 'Memorex TravelLink' to host the transfer. I moved an mp4 from a thumb drive to the Iomega drive I was testing, just to see if I could do it. The transfer was agonizingly slow (I think the Memorex, which was developed in 2005 and I believe has been discontinued, uses USB 1.1 speed) but it did work and I was able to play the movie afterwords off the Iomega drive. So, it's doable with this configuration, but it's not pretty by any means. I wish someone would develop a better way to do this...
This drive is formatted for NTFS. For portable drives, I tend to prefer using FAT32 since even nowadays I occasionally run across a software or hardware interface that can't use NTFS. I went to Iomega's support site and did a search on FAT32, which led me to a downloadable application that easily reformatted the drive as I needed.
All in all, the drive is nice. It performed silently and quickly when plugged into my laptop and it's light enough to carry around. Given that it has a better (IMHO) cable than others, if the price is equivalent I'd buy this one without hesitation.
28 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Color Name:Ruby Red| Size Name:500 GB|Amazon Verified Purchase
Iomega's eGo 500GB portable USB HDD has been redesigned. When you purchase, make sure you are buying the new version.
I bought this portable HDD specifically to back up my iTunes directory, which is approaching 300GB. I also own another Iomega 500 GB portable HDD, and when I ordered this one I thought I was getting another identical unit. This one has been updated, and apparently for the better. This one is shaped like a slightly large deck of cards rather than as a whiskey flask configuration like the older model. It also has nice little rubber feet. But the big improvement seems to be that it is somewhat thriftier regarding whether it could draw sufficient power from the USB ports. This unit easily functioned in one of my computers in which the USB port was insufficient to power the earlier model. I do not know if this is a quirk or whether Iomega improved the design.
Further substantiating the theory that this unit is redesigned to be more power-efficient is the fact that it runs much cooler than my earlier model. I mean hugely cooler. I have moved about 400GB of data onto this unit, and it is barely warm above room temperature. Hard to believe that this does not represent a significantly better re-engineering of the drive.
Installation could not have been easier--there wasn't any. The unit came pre-formatted for NTFS and I simply plugged it into my Windows 7 machine and it was immediately recognized. I renamed the unit "Red Bounty" by right-clicking "properties" and within 30 seconds I was backing up iTunes.
Highly recommended.
I bought this portable HDD specifically to back up my iTunes directory, which is approaching 300GB. I also own another Iomega 500 GB portable HDD, and when I ordered this one I thought I was getting another identical unit. This one has been updated, and apparently for the better. This one is shaped like a slightly large deck of cards rather than as a whiskey flask configuration like the older model. It also has nice little rubber feet. But the big improvement seems to be that it is somewhat thriftier regarding whether it could draw sufficient power from the USB ports. This unit easily functioned in one of my computers in which the USB port was insufficient to power the earlier model. I do not know if this is a quirk or whether Iomega improved the design.
Further substantiating the theory that this unit is redesigned to be more power-efficient is the fact that it runs much cooler than my earlier model. I mean hugely cooler. I have moved about 400GB of data onto this unit, and it is barely warm above room temperature. Hard to believe that this does not represent a significantly better re-engineering of the drive.
Installation could not have been easier--there wasn't any. The unit came pre-formatted for NTFS and I simply plugged it into my Windows 7 machine and it was immediately recognized. I renamed the unit "Red Bounty" by right-clicking "properties" and within 30 seconds I was backing up iTunes.
Highly recommended.
93 of 108 people found the following review helpful
The Good:
This drive is very flat (thin) and has the approximate dimensions of a thin mid-size ladies' wallet. For me, it has the perfect size to take along on the road. I have other portable drives, such as the Seagate FreeAgent, a SimpleTech and several Western Digital Passports but in terms of portability I like the eGo best. The color red is stylish and although glossy not too prone to visible fingerprints. The rubberized feet on the bottom prevent the eGo to slide around the desk. All in all a good feel.
Setup was very easy, nothing to it at all. It worked right out of the box as all USB external drives should: Plugged the cable into the device, the other end into a USB port on my laptop and that was it. The drive does not come with an external power supply, it only has a dual-USB cable to plug into two USB ports when the power coming from one isn't enough. For my Dell XPS M1330 it worked with one but you might be out of luck if operating the drive with an older laptop since the eGo has no power plug for an external adapter.
The Not So Good:
The drive was very quiet in the beginning, actually inaudible. However, after I had (very slowly and gently!) picked it up during operation and held it at an angle (again very gently), it began making disconcerting clicking noises and quit the data transfer that was in progress. The blue light indicating operations simply went out and nothing happened anymore. I had to unplug and reconnect to get it to operate again. After that, it was audible and on occasion made these weird fast clicking and knocking sounds until the blue light went out again, and rapid clicking could be heard. After a few moments the blue light came back on but it stayed steady which means it is connected but not operating. Naturally I do not like that... Especially not after operating it only for roughly 40 minutes total and the manufacturer's claim that this drive can survive a 51" drop. Or does it only do that when it was not operating at the time?
Several more attempts to copy a large 25 GB folder with subfolders failed, I was never once successful. In every instance the drive quit operating in the middle of it. Also I noticed that even when it copied something, subfolders remained empty. On the surface everything looked ok but the folders had no content. I would get a message saying that the file could not be found and that was it. Only disconnecting/reconnecting and restarting the copy process would help in these situations - until it stopped working again. BTW, a drive error check revealed no problems so I am at a loss as to what is causing this behavior.
Summary:
I am not sure I would trust important data to this drive after observing this behavior. Maybe it is just a lemon since I have read several favorable reviews of this drive but as of this moment I am rather suspicious of its reliability. Too bad because I liked the drive's design and speed. But this is the second Iomega drive I own that has not impressed me in terms of reliable operations so maybe I will just stay away from the brand in the future.
This drive is very flat (thin) and has the approximate dimensions of a thin mid-size ladies' wallet. For me, it has the perfect size to take along on the road. I have other portable drives, such as the Seagate FreeAgent, a SimpleTech and several Western Digital Passports but in terms of portability I like the eGo best. The color red is stylish and although glossy not too prone to visible fingerprints. The rubberized feet on the bottom prevent the eGo to slide around the desk. All in all a good feel.
Setup was very easy, nothing to it at all. It worked right out of the box as all USB external drives should: Plugged the cable into the device, the other end into a USB port on my laptop and that was it. The drive does not come with an external power supply, it only has a dual-USB cable to plug into two USB ports when the power coming from one isn't enough. For my Dell XPS M1330 it worked with one but you might be out of luck if operating the drive with an older laptop since the eGo has no power plug for an external adapter.
The Not So Good:
The drive was very quiet in the beginning, actually inaudible. However, after I had (very slowly and gently!) picked it up during operation and held it at an angle (again very gently), it began making disconcerting clicking noises and quit the data transfer that was in progress. The blue light indicating operations simply went out and nothing happened anymore. I had to unplug and reconnect to get it to operate again. After that, it was audible and on occasion made these weird fast clicking and knocking sounds until the blue light went out again, and rapid clicking could be heard. After a few moments the blue light came back on but it stayed steady which means it is connected but not operating. Naturally I do not like that... Especially not after operating it only for roughly 40 minutes total and the manufacturer's claim that this drive can survive a 51" drop. Or does it only do that when it was not operating at the time?
Several more attempts to copy a large 25 GB folder with subfolders failed, I was never once successful. In every instance the drive quit operating in the middle of it. Also I noticed that even when it copied something, subfolders remained empty. On the surface everything looked ok but the folders had no content. I would get a message saying that the file could not be found and that was it. Only disconnecting/reconnecting and restarting the copy process would help in these situations - until it stopped working again. BTW, a drive error check revealed no problems so I am at a loss as to what is causing this behavior.
Summary:
I am not sure I would trust important data to this drive after observing this behavior. Maybe it is just a lemon since I have read several favorable reviews of this drive but as of this moment I am rather suspicious of its reliability. Too bad because I liked the drive's design and speed. But this is the second Iomega drive I own that has not impressed me in terms of reliable operations so maybe I will just stay away from the brand in the future.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Just what I needed
Bought this because of Iomega's reputation and the price. Works great and doesn't need a power source other than a usb port. Just using it as a backup drive for CAD files. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Linda Hankes-Smith
not very reliable
I purchased eGO 500GB drive as a 2nd backup drive. It worked OK with very minimum use (connected once a month to update files) for almost one year. Read more
Published 6 months ago by obachan, CA
Hardware, not Hard Drive, Failure
I purchased the 250GB camouflage hard drive. I liked that it had a nice rubber grip that provided protection against dropping--thankfully, it never had to live up to its... Read more
Published 6 months ago by tightsandtea
Great Buy
Bought 5 of these for use as an off site backup for my business computer. Had them for over a year and they have performed flawlessly. Read more
Published 10 months ago by TonyD
Iomega eGo BlackBelt Hard drive
I was amazed by the video on this Hard Drive. It seems indestructible. When I saw the video, I had to buy one. I work in a heavy demanding area. Read more
Published 13 months ago by BRuiz
Great backup Hard Drive
Very Rugged. Turned it loose with my son at school. Great drive which we have been using a year now
Published 16 months ago by Richard C. Allred
Sexiest looking external drive and Best external drive brand.
IOmega has exceeded my expectation. I have the 250GB model, the same brown imitation-leather design. The design looks and feels like a real flask ('platman' deutsch). Read more
Published 16 months ago by Gabriel E. Borlean
A leather covered HD! Great idea
It has a truly elegant looking hard drive. Good at work and some of the songs I treasure on my iPod are now stored here. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Tamra
Awesome Hard Drive
I got this hard drive in a timely manner. This is really a great product. Anyone who needs a lot of space for not a lot of money. This is the hard drive for you. A MUST HAVE!
Published 18 months ago by M.C.Mosley
Mac OS X 10.6 Users JUST DONT
these drives and Iomega eGo USB 2.0 500 GB Compact Portable Hard Drive 34897 can not be converted to Mac OS Journalled from NTSF
(Win7) as the instructions claim they can. Read more
(Win7) as the instructions claim they can. Read more
Published 18 months ago by V. Brown
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Capacity: 500 GB | Color: Ruby Red
