Get a FREE fully-working copy of Steganos Security Suite 7 (worth £49.99) when you sign up to the Practical PC Newsletter. Review: Iomega Peerless
David Dorn presents an overview of Iomega's latest mobile storage technology - the Peerless system.
| Product | Peerless |
|---|---|
| Company | Iomega |
| Web | www.iomega.co.uk |
| Price | USB £318, Firewire £318, both with 20GB disk |
| We like | |
| We don't like | |
| Rating | 7/10 |
| Requirements |
Peerless uses an innovative modular design. A Peerless peripheral system is built up from three components: the disk itself, a base station and a connector. The connector can be anything from FireWire (IEEE1394) to USB (1.1 and 2.0) and SCSI. The base station is the same regardless of the disk capacity used or the connector plugged into the rear.
Disks use IBM technology and aren't much bigger than a PDA. The disks are currently available in 10 and 20 GB capacities. Iomega has sealed them and moved the disk mechanism to the base station, which means disks can't collect dust or other signal decreasing outer-world particles.
Furthermore, Iomega has packed the disks in a shockproof casing that will withstand 400 G, equalling a drop of about 70 centimetres (2.5 ft) height on commercial grade carpet. The Peerless base station is not much bigger than the disk itself and standing upright it has room for a transfer rate counter at the bottom.
The Peerless system wasn't developed with the enterprise user in mind--the base station, connector and the disk are all durable plastics, enterprise use would have called for more expensive metal encasing. However, the Peerless system can and probably will be used by SMEs (Small and Medium-Sized companies) as well, given its capacity and the ability to carry the disk around. In fact, Iomega is targeting the system to graphics users and small office users. To cater for the needs of professional users who want more security from a storage device than the simple capability of moving a plastic 'lock' so a disk can't be accidentally be overwritten, the Peerless is equipped with chip-based identifier technology.
The Peerless cartridge has a secure memory device built into it. In this device are 192 bytes of memory of which selectable portions are fusible at the factory providing for absolute in-the-field inalterability of those locations. Access to this memory requires the Peerless drive's firmware to engage in a cryptographic challenge-response protocol.
This feature is crucial for the adoption of the Peerless technology by multimedia providers, who can rely on the security to prevent illegal copying of the content on the Peerless disk. Digital rights management may also become a user-selectable feature in the future. This would turn the Peerless system into a storage 'vault' for all kinds of purposes.
Initially, Iomega is targeting the Peerless system as a replacement of the now quite venerable Jaz technology, as an alternative for DLT and DAT-tapes for backup purposes, as a storage medium for CAD/CAM engineers, designers of Web sites, multimedia publishers, etc. Peerless sits on the border between Iomega's personal storage solutions--it is cheap enough for large storage needs of individual users, yet flexible enough to accommodate the needs of small companies.
Whether Peerless will become a success will largely depend on Iomega's capability to deliver the quality needed by professional users. The early Jaz disks were all flawed, resulting in many enterprise-level users migrating to other systems. If Iomega plays its hand right, Peerless will become ubiquitous technology for many uses in the years to come.
