Customer Reviews

Iomega Prestige 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive 34275

5 star:		(679)
4 star:		(230)
3 star:		(58)
2 star:		(63)
1 star:		(212)

 

 

I stopped using Iomega products several years ago (remember the infamous "click of death" infesting Iomega Zip drives?) But after reading the Amazon reviews, I decided to get the Iomega 1TB drive.

It is about half the size of my old 350 GB Maxtor hard drives, costs half as much, and has three times the storage capacity! I plugged it in and Windows XP had it up and running in seconds, no fuss.

As a test, I transferred two gigs of photos (I'm a photojournalist) and it backed up two gigs in two minutes. It is almost perfectly silent.

I didn't bother downloading the free Retrospect Backup software; I always back up manually as part of my business routine.

If I ever have a problem with this drive, I'll update this review. Otherwise, I rate it as a perfect high-capacity drive, period.

Update note: been using it 18 months now, no problem. Works fine on my new Windows 7 64 bit machine. Also, I keep it turned off except when I need it. It tends to get quite warm if I leave it running.

Amazon offers this unit for less than some big-box stores. Another good reason to buy from Amazon.

Always remember that outfits like iomega, LaCie, Fantom and others are packagers, not hard drive manufacturers. There are only a few hard drive manufacturers and all of them turn out good products. This does not mean that hard drives don't fail - they do and anyone who keeps only one copy of critical data is a fool.

The units I purchased both had current models of Seagate Barracuda drives installed: excellent devices. Right now, the drives themselves from some sources cost only a few dollars less than the iomega unit, so you are getting the external housing for just a few dollars.

The housing has a power switch, very nice at a time when other manufacturers are eliminating such "frills" and a white activity light on the side, which strikes me as a strange place for it. Since the housing has no fan, there is no fan noise. The noise from the drive itself should be imperceptible. (If it isn't, return the unit immediately.)The housing remains cool to the touch in use.

The unit size is nice and a plastic base is included for those who prefer a vertical mounting.

A power supply and USB cable round out the package.

One of the very nice aspects of this unit is that there is no software installed on the drive - nor is any included in the box. Yea! The drive comes NTFS formatted and, for use with an Apple Macintosh, must be reformatted.

Overall, a very nice value.

Jerry

I've got 21 iomega drives - I've been using them for years and I've never had a problem - though a contract employee of mine said one of his died. (He actually just shipped it to me and yep - it's dead.) I just bought my first 1TB drive and I'm psyched. I'm using it to back up my old, lower-capacity drives. It seems as solid as the others. I'm going to fit all the video and projects on my first six drives onto one drive now! It's smaller than any of the others, too - as far as external physical dimensions. They got the dimensions wrong on this site - it's 8 x 4.5 x 1.25. It's awesome. I'm a pro video producer and now thanks to these drives (and a smokin' laptop) I'll be super-portable. I think I'll wind up with everything on 4 or 5 of these now. Killer product. I love these things.


***


NOTE - I now own 5 of the new prestige drives, and one of them has stopped working. Luckily I back everything up. I'm still buying the drives, and I'm hopeful that Iomega will replace it, but you should know I lost one of these newer ones.


***

NOTE - No, I didn't lose it after all. It was acting wonky for a while, but that was at least six or seven months ago, and I haven't had any trouble since. (It wasn't linking up to the computer, but that stopped after about a week.) It's been working fine since then.

It looks great, feels great and is quiet and so easy to install. Those are your pluses. But 3 weeks later, I get an error that says "Delayed Write Failed... the data has been lost." I chat with support and they tell me "Any hard drive that you have sooner or later will go bad. It is a mechanical thing that they will wear out. When that happens can't be known. What happens if you need to use the drive for backup, it is only a backup drive if the data that you have on the drive is also somewhere else. If it is only on this drive then it is a archive."

I was livid. I understand if after a 6 months, things start conking out and I should have made a triple backup, but 3 weeks? Plus I didn't even move the drive, it's been sitting pretty on my desk. My husband bought an iOmega a while ago and warned me that happened to him and I thought it was a fluke and he was probably unlucky. Including me, this makes 100% of the people I know who owned iomegas portable hdd dying on them.

While the argument of hard drives will conk out eventually is understandable, i do not see this happening for desktops or laptop hard drives (talk about mobiles) -- which then I can only conclude is they use inferior quality resources to manufacture.

bottomline - buy at your own risk and it's not a viable backup solution.

I have been buying through amazon.com for many years but this is the first time I was compelled enough to write a review because my experience was so bad with this company and this product that I really felt it important to let other potential buyers know about it. Please do pay attention to the bad reviews on this product (about 22% all reviews so far).

This has to be the worst product I have ever purchased on amazon.com. Not only the product is worthless but the company and their customer service is totally against every customer service principal imaginable. If I was a lawyer, I'd drag this company out to the courts for wrongful and misleadig business practices. Here are things any potential buyer should be aware of before even thinking about buying any Iomega product:

1. The product is absolutely not reliable. The drive crashed unexpectedly within weeks of purchasing.
2. You have to pay to talk to a customer support agent.
3. They only offer a live chat with customer support but it is useless. They just copy and paste from scripts.
4. Their warranty is written by the sleaziest of lawyers. If the drive fails, you have to pay to ship it back to them (and lose all your data) and they will replace with only a remanufactured one, i.e., another drive that has failed before.
5. Once they replace your new drive with a remanufactured one, your one-year warranty on the original product gets reduced to 90 days.
6. They constantly promote their very expensive data recovery service during the "online chat", as if these bad drives were manufactured and shipped with misleading warranty to pimp their data recovery service.

I've had the Prestige for almost 2 years now. It works great.
-There's No annoying software (like my friend's WD Mybook)
-Runs super quiet
-I've kept it on for days at time and it only gets a little warm
-It's got a cool stand
-It has a power switch

I've been very impressed thus far and would highly recommend this hard drive. Only downside is its actually about 465 gigs [Edit: This review is for the 500GB HD], but most hard drives are like that. The reason I say so far is externals seem to be prone to crashing if you read reviews. Hopefully it lasts forever though.

Again, Sweet hard drive.

Edit: Also, I just bought the 1.5 Tb because I loved the 500 gig so much. I've still had no trouble. Also, Amazon's prices are excellent and delivery is quick.

I bought this hard drive in November 2008 but didn't actually take it out of the box until late December. Less than a week after unboxing it, I turned it on only to have it start spinning uselessly. My computer wouldn't recognize it as anything but a malfunctioning USB device and following the troubleshooting steps on the Iomega website got me nowhere. Support is annoying at best; I dislike using online chats for support (the only free option) and phone calls run $25 per incident. Email isn't available at all. It's ridiculous. It's particularly frustrating as the data on the hard drive is now lost to me, some of which can't be replaced, even if the hard drive is.

This is my first experience with an external hard drive. I only wish it had been a better one. As it stands now, I can't recommend this drive to anyone, especially as other reviews indicate that I'm not the only one with this problem. Look elsewhere for reliability.

Now I can compare this newer version to the Iomega 33654 500GB external drive. Despite my remaining caution since the other commenter's note about noise, I bought the upgrade because I needed more space. It does not disappoint. Both are quiet, fast, sleek, no-nonsense, easy plug-and-play, and complimentary to any computer desk.

My favorite part: both have an on-off switch which. As I said in my review of the older version, this is a small thing that seems a big step up from the WD MyBook 250GB that I also own. Compared to the MyBook, both the Iomega 33654 and the Iomega 34270 are nicer looking and quieter.

The main difference to the layperson, that one cannot tell from the pictures, is the size of the unit. The newer version (this one, the 34270) is 7.9 inches long, while the older 33654 is 8.6 inches. The difference suddenly made the older one (that I thought was so sleek) look bulky and cumbersome on my desk. Both are 5 inches high when standing in their base.

Other differences include a white light on the side of the 34270 (instead of a blue light on the front of the 33654) that is less distracting (though I thought the blue light cool at first), and no little foot pads on the "side" of this (newer) one ... so a possible downside is that, if you lay down the 34270, its shiny finish will touch your desk (no big deal; it looks better standing up in its curvy base anyway :). That last part (no little pads) is the only reason I took off a star.

Oh, did I mention that the newer one is, at least for now, cheaper than the older one? That alone should earn it back a star for a perfect rating, but it might be just a promo. Anyway, I love both versions. My movies are backed up and so far (a couple of weeks) I have no problems at all.

I bought this external hard drive from IOmega through Amazon. I had it for less than a MONTH before it failed.
I contacted customer service. Told them what happened and they said it was the power supply that was the problem. (It clearly wasn't.) They said they would send another power supply.
Three weeks go by. Nothing.
I contact them again. No explanation for what happened before. This time, they express the power supply.
... Which of course, makes absolutely NO difference.
Contact them *again*! This time, they acknowledge that maybe there is a problem with the hard drive. They'll replace it ... but I have to pay to send it back.
Sure. Why not charge the customer for a defective product from your company after ignoring a request for service for three weeks?

I just need a solid drive to backup my files, music and pictures. This one suits the bill just fine. I do not use any back-up software, so I cannot vouch for the one you can download from Iomega. I just drag the My Documents folder from my laptop over to the external hard drive icon and all my stuff gets copied. I bought this one on the strength of earlier reviews and have not been disappointed. Mine has been quiet and has not shown any heating problems. I may even buy another. (I did, a month later Second one is great,too)