Last Updated 19/Jan/2009
Review: Iomega eGo ENCRYPT 320GB Portable Hard Drive
Don Bradbury looks at another recent addition to the Iomega range of external disk drives
| Product | 320GB eGo ENCRYPT external USB 2.0 drive |
|---|---|
| Company | Iomega |
| Web | www.iomega-europe.com |
| Price | £105, incl VAT |
| We like | Small; quiet; cool running; password and encryption protection of data; backup software. |
| We don't like | Questions over the security features, and the slow and esoteric Retrospect. |
| Rating | 7/10 |
| Requirements | Windows 2000, XP and Vista (all versions) |
With the potential - and apparently actual - rate of data theft from portable disks on the increase, it makes sense to try to protect the important information that drives like this may contain. Iomega's plan with this device is to encrypt your data and password protect access to it.
The drive is in the same primary format as the basic eGo we reviewed recently. This time, though, the casing is enveloped in a plastic corner-to-corner Power Grip band that offers improved handling and some protection that's additional to it's internal Drop Guard Xtreme disk protection, which claims safety in a fall from seven feet.
A single USB 2.0 port and cable are provided, as before, but this time the eGo has a rather nifty activation LED mounted on the top port-end of the casing that's useful. Compatible with Windows 2000 Pro, XP and all versions of Vista, with 256MB or RAM or higher, the drive is primarily intended for on-the-road use. As such there is no power supply to lug around; the drive takes power from your USB port. If one port cannot provide sufficient power, then there is a flying lead on the cable to a second USB port you can use. The latter carries no data, only power, so remember to have the main lead connected or the drive will not be recognised.
Password protection of the device, plus 128-bit AES hardware encryption management, are the keynotes for this addition to the Iomega range of external drives. Do they work?
For the autorun feature to work, you might need to hold down the shift key while you add the drive to the system, or make sure you have autorun active. Failing that you can boot to the Desktop as usual, select the unprotected part of the new drive in Explorer, and run (double-click) ReferenceApplicationLaucher.exe manually (not the file incorrectly mentioned in the user manual, which is not present). You can then set up a password to access the remaining 300GB capacity of the drive, use that in any appropriate way, and then try to dismount the drive.
Dismounting was prevented by Windows Vista, however, with the comment that some application was still using the device. What you have to do - though there was no reference to it in the user manual - is to summon Task Manager, select Processes, locate ReferenceApplicationMonitor.exe and shut it down. Then you should be able to exit Task Manager and dismount the drive in the usual manner. That omission from the drive setup is to be corrected in a future release of the eGo ENCRYPT, Iomega told us.
Alternatively, you can just fully shut down the computer in order to free the eGo ENCRYPT, but that will be considered something of a pain if you normally hibernate the machine to save on reboot time. However, for occasional use it's acceptable since you should fully shut down now and then in any event in order to remove cache files from memory. They tend to accumulate if you don't fully reboot.
You can set up personal reminders of your password in case you forget it, and you can change the password provided you know the original. You can also change the personal questions that prompt the absent-minded of their password.
An unrecoverable cryptographic erase of the drive is also possible via this menu, which is another useful security feature.
Data backup will figure large on the list of possible applications for a drive such as this. EMC Retrospect is once again offered as a free download, but with the ENCRYPT drive you have the choice of the slow and rather difficult to configure version 2.5, or you can opt for the far more customisable version 7.6 (plus an update to it after you've installed it).
We were familiar with the layout of the latter version of Retrospect, after having used an old but similarly laid-out version of it for several years, but we still found it rather complex to configure for the first time. It was, again, slow. Acronis TrueImage v11 with data compression, for example, backed up our system drive nearly twice as fast as Retrospect v7.6 without compression which would slow it down further, again without verification. Retrospect works, though, and it's free, so you might decide to settle for it. Retrospect has never let us down, and that's a critical factor.
If, by the way, you back up with Retrospect 7.6 to the eGo ENCRYPT and then discover that the entire drive capacity has been used up, no matter how much or how little data you back up, it probably means you've configured Retrospect for a 'Removable Disk Backup Set' instead of a 'Disk Backup Set' during setup. The former is intended for use with CD/DVD backup where the whole disk has to be dedicated to the single task, while the latter is for external hard drive backup. Users really need to understand associated technical lingo that the author of Retrospect seems to delight in using.
In conclusion
The Iomega eGo ENCRYPT is an excellent idea that fell somewhat short by failing to implement the password and security features very well in the current release, but particularly the dismount procedure which does not work automatically. All should be corrected in a new version that's due out some time in Q1, 2009, according to Iomega.
Offered at a reasonable price (for a portable drive), and with decent capacity and good ergonomics, the quiet, cool-running drive running at 5400rpm was fast enough for all general purposes. The encryption feature could be on many potential buyer's shopping list once Iomega have it sorted out.
