Iogear 3.5" Ion 250 GB Combo Hard Drive with Tri-Select (GHD335C250)

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Product Details

• Item Weight: 4 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 5 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0006GDC8A
• Item model number: GHD335C250
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #70,565 in Electronics (See Bestsellers in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 29, 2004

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

IOGEAR's 3.5" Tri-Select Combo ION Drive is the most stylish and practical solution for storing and protecting your documents, as well as audio, video and other media files at a push of a button. Tri-Select technology utilizes the power of Dantz Retrospect Express providing you with the most powerful and customizable backup solution for any home or office. This attractive enclosure boasts both FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 (a.k.a. iLink & IEEE 1394) compatibility and offers a very small-footprint. The ION Drive supports extremely high data transfer rates of up to 400 Mbps (FireWire) and 480Mbps (USB 2.0) for blazing fast transfer of large multimedia files. It is also backward compatible with FireWire 400 and USB 1.1 specifications. This external hard drive is very easy to connect to your PC or Mac desktop or notebook, is hot-swappable and Plug-n-Play. The 3.5" USB 2.0 ION Drive is backed by IOGEAR's 1-year Limited Warranty.

Features IOGEAR's new ION Drive features Tri-Select backup. This allows users to design multiple types of back up prescriptions for their computer, whether backing up a single file or an entire directory, once set up the Tri-Select button activate each specific backup as it is needed. Combined with Dantz Retrospect, this ION drive provides you with a corporate level back-up solution ready to tackle the smallest or the largest of back-ups necessary to give you piece of mind; Dantz Retrospect included Free. This all-in-one solution can upgrade your computer in 2 minutes Many people buy new computers because they run out of room on their hard drive - Instead of paying $1500 for a new system, double/triple your hard drive room with the ION from IOGEAR - Increases your computer's life and your ROI

• No technical knowledge needed to install it, no need to take apart your computer - plug it in and your computer immediately recognizes and uses it
• Perfect for today's needs, all of which consume a lot of room on your computer's hard drive:
  - Music
  - Videos
  - Photos
• Can also be used to backup your main hard drive so if it crashes -- and it definitely can -- you won't have lost your precious files
• Features not just one but both of the fastest connectivity technologies, USB 2.0 and FireWire 400
  - Saves information faster: Important when dealing with large media files
  - Works just as easily on Macs and PCs
• It's the only elegant design available
  - Small footprint make it a stylish and space-saving addition to your work area
  - Can also be kept on the floor, out of sight
  
• The FireWire interface supports data transfer rates of up to 480 Mbps
• Backward compatible with FireWire 400 and USB 1.1 specifications
• USB 2.0 interface, supporting high speed data transfer rates of up to 480 Mbps
• Supports drive capacities well over 300 GB
• No fan needed, hi-tech design allows for optimal cooling without the need for additional noisy fans
• Hot-swappable, Plug-n-Play
• Compact size, perfect for the desktop professional
• 1 Year Limited Warranty
  

Product Description

IOGEAR's 3.5" Tri-Select Combo ION Drive is the most stylish and practical solution for storing and protecting your documents, as well as audio, video and other media files at a push of a button. Tri-Select technology utilizes the power of Dantz Retrospect Express providing you with the most powerful and customizable backup solution for any home or office. This attractive enclosure boasts both FireWire 400 (a.k.a. iLink & IEEE 1394) and USB 2.0 compatibility and offers a very small footprint. The ION Drive supports extremely high data transfer rates of up to 400 Mbps (FireWire) and 480Mbps (USB 2.0) for blazing fast transfer of large multimedia files. It is also backward compatible with FireWire 400 and USB 1.1 specifications. This external hard drive is very easy to connect to your PC or Mac desktop or notebook, is hot-swappable and Plug-n-Play.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars To clarify the previous review (from another user), May 17, 2005

By	Y. LIN "save the earth" (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I recently bought this drive, and I am pleased to get this external drive to ensure the safety of my data on the iMac at my workplace and the compatibility of FAT32 system to allow me port individual files between my home PC and that iMac.

To clarify the confusion in the previous review, I want to stress the compatibility issue for the out-of-box 8 partitions formatted with FAT32. This allows PC-Mac crosstalk in my case. In their manual, they provided the following instruction in case you are a dedicated PC or Mac user.

Setting up your drive:
If for some reason you need to re-partition your ION™ drive, you will need to keep in mind that FAT32 limits the partition size that can be created, through the USB interface, to roughly 32GB when using the FAT32 file system. If you have Windows 2000 or XP you can format the drive with NTFS which has no limit on the partition size. If you have Mac OS 9.2 or greater, you can format the drive with HFS+ (which has no limit on the partition size) using the Disk utility found in Mac OS 10.x.x.

Although the short instructions did not explain everything about the bundled Dantz Retrospect Express 6.0 and the Tri-Select Button Management software, it is not difficult to assign the three buttons to different backup needs. I just hope my review can help other people choose the right external backup drive.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid device, good software, but too many partitions, August 30, 2005

By	J. C. Roth (Collinsville, Illinois USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This external hard drive is one of the better constructed and visually appearing ones on the market. It is vented for heat reduction, has a soft blue glow, and since it is vertically mounted it does eat up desk space like a big brick (many competitors do.)

I saw in another review that the FAT32 format was a welcomed feature for MAC users and it should also help for those older operating system like Win98. Due to size limitation you end up splitting the 250GB into 32GB chunks. All of those partitions are a pain and uses up drive letters that in a corporate office are needed for drive mappings. Unfortunately, if you blow these away and make a large NTFS partition, the Retrospect software no longer works. I have not found a way around this yet.

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid Solid Solid, December 12, 2006

By	Charlie Caldwell (Waterloo, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've had this drive for about 2 years now and it the best drive i've had yet. When I got it the first thing I did was wipe the drive and install one large NTFS partition. After reading the other reviews that were left here I now figure out why the included software never worked. I never cared and thought it was dumb anyway. But let me tell you this drive is shaped a little funny but it has traveled in my backpack and been bumped and dropped and scratched up and generally been beatup. Still working good. Also I love the dual firewire/ usb 2.0 connection.