Last Updated 21/Oct/2009
Review: Iomega 320GB eGo external USB 2.0, Firewire 400, and Firewire 800 drive
Don Bradbury tries out the latest portable drive from Iomega Corp.
| Product | 320GB eGo external USB 2.0, Firewire 400, and Firewire 800 drive |
|---|---|
| Company | Iomega |
| Web | www.iomega.com |
| Price | £79.99 incl VAT |
| We like | Triple interface options, quiet running |
| We don't like | The drive comes formatted HFS+ for Mac users, so reformatting is required for the PC |
| Rating | 8/10 |
| Requirements | Mac, Windows 2000, XP and Vista (all versions) |
We've looked at Iomega's eGo drives in the past and generally been impressed. This latest addition to the range to be submitted was actually the Mac Edition, but a few hours of reformatting takes care of that for PC users. Ours was a rather swish Ruby Red example, with the three different interface ports at one end, together with a bright, flashing blue, activation LED.
Intended for portable application, there's no PSU in the pack, nor a power socket, but to take care of those computers that fail to provide sufficient power to drive the eGo, the USB lead carries a second plug so that you can make use of the power from an adjacent USB socket if necessary.
Firewire power problems
Not so with the Firewire interfaces, unfortunately, and our example failed to run out of either of the Firewire ports unless it was operated via a powered hub. The computer's own Firewire ports were obviously unpowered, and that's a feature of many PCs. Having to interpose of a hub in order to supply power to the drive via Firewire is rather unfortunate in terms of portable application on a PC, but it works.
The remaining problem could be to provide cables to cater for the differing port designs of Firewire 400 and 800. For direct connection, the required cables are included in the pack, but you'll need extra cabling when using a hub.
Primarily intended for Mac users then, our drive came formatted HFS+, which is unrecognisable to a PC. So our first job was to reformat the drive NTFS. After attaching the drive, Vista saw the drive but did not recognise it of course, so Vista's Disk Management function had to be used and the drive given 'Master Boot Record' as the partition style. The unknown drive was then initialised, and by right clicking on the black bar over the drive's graphic and selecting 'New Simple Volume', using the default options to start a reformat to NTFS.
That's not a quick job, so the new user had better allocate a few hours for that to complete before embarking on any new work. Our 320GB model took three hours for reformatting to complete.
If other operating systems are to be involved with the eGo, the Iomega FAT32 Formatter can be used to change the format to FAT32, and Iomega's support area of www.iomega.com provides instructions.
When they've been enabled with a power supply, the two Firewire ports can be used for pass-through, ie when one Firewire port is in use, the second may be used to attach another Firewire device to the system. That's a useful feature of twin Firewire interfaces that some will appreciate.
Performance
This was about that we'd expect, with Firewire 800 running at somewhat faster speeds - though not even close to theoretical - compared with Firewire 400. Strangely, data transfer rates via USB 2.0 were actually higher than when using Firewire 400, as theoretically predicted, but generally we find the latter is the faster of the two in typical data transfer applications.
Whether that was down to having to interpose the Firewire hub for the sake of its power supply, or the fact that an add-on Firewire card had to be employed, we couldn't say, but performance was generally acceptable nevertheless. Many users will value the triple interface for its connectivity options rather than for potential performance gains.
In conclusion
Just how much weight to place on the veracity of our performance data we would be reluctant to say, in view of our need to interpose not only a Firewire hub but also to employ an add-on card to gain access to Firewire ports. But the facility to use any of three different interfaces would be welcomed by many, and the drive itself operated well on out test notebook after reformatting the Mac Edition appliance for use on a PC.
A 5400rpm drive is not exactly a performance device, but data transfer rates were acceptable, and on-the-road users will be happy, provided the computers they have to work on provide powered Firewire ports, otherwise they will most likely use the perfectly acceptable USB 2.0 option. USB 2.0 ports being far more universally provided than Firewire will provide many home users (as opposed to travellers who need to maximise their connectivity options) with all they need, so for them, a less expensive drive than this, featuring only USB, could suffice.
As a final comment, we noted that this drive did not spin-up when connected to our desktop's USB 2.0 port - rather than our test notebook's port. The drive was seen, as indicated by the activity LED lighting up, but the disk just sat there ticking away merrily, indicating insufficient power to drive it. Rather marginal, then, we think, in terms of power requirement. That port had not previously failed to power portable USB drives.
