Customer Reviews

Iomega REV 35GB USB 2.0 External Drive - 32927

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

 

 

This drive is marketed by Iomega as primarily an archival solution, but it is also great as a kind of floppy drive for the 21st Century (a super Zip drive). The hardware is faultless - a massive improvement on the deeply flawed Peerless drive - and the Iomega REV disks seem robust: I send one overseas though the mail once a week, have it returned the following week, and so far without any reliability problems.

However, it is as a backup solution that I purchased my Rev drive and in this context the whole is let down by the supplied backup software. Iomega's Rev-enabled versions of Backup Pro and Ghost just don't make the grade for serious backups. I soon gave up trying to make sense of Backup Pro and getting it to work consistently. Instead, I bought a copy of Dantz Retrospect 6.5 Professional, for about $90. Now, I make perfect daily backups.

For the cost of this drive, why doesn't Iomega bundle a copy (perhaps limited) of Retrospect?

The drive is fast, efficiant, reliable, and once saved my life because I'd backed up a whole hard drive of a laptop on to it - a laptop which then got left by an open window during a sudden downpour. I've tried a whole host of backup solutions over the years, this is the only one that allows you to take an image of an entire hard drive in about 35 minutes (15 GB of data: my last solution took nearly four hours to do this) and store it somewhere safe, for a rainy day.

This is being marketed as a backup solution, and that's fine, it's a great one and, depending upon what you're using, maybe a little expensive. However, don't overlook (and this isn't obvious at all from their marketing) that this is still just like one very fast, and, very, VERY BIG password protected Zip Drive! Iomega has finally delivered what they promised (and NEVER delivered at 2.0 USB!!!) with the Peerless several years ago. This unit is really small -- the disks are smaller than Zip disks -- and if they keep up with their plans of doubling the capacity every 18 months or so, they may really be onto something. Installation was totally unremarkable and exactly as promised. It comes with a version of Norton Ghost made especially for the Rev. Following the included directions step-by-step re: the Ghost backup is very important.

Big suprise to me - Iomega REV software backs up user files ONLY.
The ad copy says "Save Everything!" but backing up Windows system files to a REV disk requies a special version of Norton Ghost (included with the REV).
REV Backup and Norton Ghost cannot share one disk even if partitioned.
Each must have its own disk.
Backing up a complete hard drive requires 2 REV disks.
REV Automatic Backup Pro will automatically back up user files at specified intervals but system backups are not automatic because Norton Ghost runs directly from the CD drive not under Windows.

I found the REV system software install confusing and my first attempt produced a configuration that does not recognize the disk that it created. Nothing in Help or the web site FAQ's addresses this issue.
I have not taken time to uninstall it and start over.

The initial REV backup copy of 7.7GB took 3.5 hours.

Be aware that the software shipped with initial units needs patches before use (available on the Iomega web site).
I believe that I can get this to work for me - but it isan't a no-brainer install.
Review pertains to the USB model REV on a Win 2000 Pro system.

When I first unpacked this , I was amazed to see just how compact it was. The software loaded without a hitch and I was up and running. This is a dream come true. It backs up my data as fast if not faster than my old external drive. I bought this because on my job we switched from our old Zip 250 to these, so I needed this at home for work, but wow It does so much more. I loaded all my sons pc games onto it so I could free up the pc's internal drive and they work just as well. I just pop out his disk and place in mine when I need to work. I love it, Thanks Iomega for a great device.

This is what we needed. Iomega finally gave us a Zip style drive to meet the needs of today. I use this as an external hard drive. It's as fast as my maxtor 80 gig, but with being able to swap disks. I lost alot of data once when my old external maxtor crashed. But with this it's easy to change disks. I had the zip 250 for 5 years and loved it but needed more storage. This is the answer. Software loaded easy and I was up and running in a few minutes.

After reviewing the product on this web site, I finally took the plunge. I couldn't be happier. I have my entire hard drive imaged and have Automatic Backup Pro updating hourly. I haven't had a decent backup system since Adaptec 4 which doesn't support Windows XP. This worked with Iomega's USB CDR. Since I now have a new computer and a wonderful backup system; I should be good to go for some time. In case of disaster, I can recover in a short time. As a Tax Preparer, this is of major importance in the months to come......

This device is simply awesome.

We've been looking for a back-up solution for some time. At first we looked at DVD based solutions.

Unfortunately, such solutions have at least four limitations. First, reading and writing to DVD is much slower than a USB hard drive. Second, DVDs can only store 4.7 GB of information. Therefore, backups need to span multiple disks; and forget about storing a hour long .avi file to a single disk. Third, writing information to DVDs requires special software. Fourth, unless you have a cartridge based DVD-RAM drive, you can only re-write data on a DVD about a thousand times.

This device solves those problems. It is fast, reliable and easy to use. After plugging it into a USB port it functions just like a removable 35 GB hard drive. We use it for backing up data and video files. We can store two hour long .avi files and their mpeg2 equivalents on a single disk.

This is based on bernoulli(removable hard drive) technology that is random access and is 8 time faster than a type drive in most cases. The cartridges are the same size as a stack of four 720k/1.44mb floppy disks. Works with most tape back up software. There are various models of this drive which include internal vs external and interface type such as USB, SCSI, Firewire, IDE.

We've been using our REV for several years as an accounting system backup device. Simple. Scriptable. Dependable. The only problem was that it rolled over on its back one evening and died. I suppose you can't expect these things to last forever, and ours went a good 3+ years without incident. Now that the price is down in the $260 range, it's a nice little device for nightly backups.