Lowest Price

: 120.98

Brand

: Iomega

Model

: 34629

Reviewer: Steve the "baseball dad"| Date:2009-12-08

I bought this hard drive from amazon in late September after reading glowing reviews on this site and the Popular mechanics torture test. After two months of great service, it failed this evening with 300GB of very important photos and videos. I had not yet backed this drive up to another drive so this is a big problem! The light which use to be very bright has gone out as has the access to the drive.

I wondered if this drive would last after feeling the temperatures rise to untouchable levels after some use with iphoto slideshows. My last project involved some video work with imovie and now it appears to be dead.

This drive might be fine for the occasional backup, but it is not up to the task of even moderate use for you Mac afficionados who do a lot with photos and video. Frankly, that was the only reason I needed a portable hard drive so this is a huge disappointment!

Review from Review from Amazon

Reviewer: Harry Warren| Date:2009-12-06

I purchased this disk for use with my MacBook Pro when I am on travel. I wanted to be able to analyze scientific data and disk speed is important for this. I made a small test problem and ran it on several of my computers. This was the fastest disk I tested (the MacBook also has a 3.06 GHz processor so the comparisons aren't always fair). This disk was almost twice as fast as the 7200 rpm internal disk in the MacBook. The disk is also relatively quiet.

However, as several other people have noted, the disk gets hot quickly and the top detaches. This is major manufacturing defect. I'm not sure if I will simply return this disk for a refund or try to get a replacement. Perhaps it was just a bad batch.

Review from Review from Amazon

Reviewer: S. Straus| Date:2009-12-04

This drive is full of problems. Read the many 1-star reviews that detail the massive design flaw that this drive has. The top came off after running for about 1 hour. It was super hot and the glue (yes, glue) melted. I returned the drive to Amazon (who sent me another in 2 days!) and the new one arrived with the top already dislodged.

This drive is extremely poorly designed. Stay away!

Review from Review from Amazon

Reviewer: Ericson Herbas| Date:2009-12-02

So far so good! The last time I purchased a hard drive was 5 years ago and boy, what a difference 5 years of tech advances make. I used to own LaCie hard drives and they are big and clunky (and unreliable as mine started making noises and my dad's LaCie stopped functioning last year after only 2.5 years!).

This time I purchased TWO Iomega eG0 500 GB drives (red Mac Edition), which includes ports for Firewire 800, Firewire 400 and USB2. I was glad that it actually came with cables for all three interfaces (usually the manufacturer don't include the Firewire cables). No power cables needed as it's bus-powered only!

It's fast, quiet, incredibly light and very durable.

My setup: Drive #1 is my Time Machine that backs up my PowerBook. Drive #2 stores data files/videos that essentially won't fit in my laptop. Drive #1 also contains the backup of all of Drive #2 contents. In the event of catastrophic emergency, I placed my Time Machine drive inside my car, hidden away in my secret compartment of course. Essentially, I created a backup of a backup.

THREE problems/annoyances I have (OK, maybe FOUR):

1. These drives get very hot. It even gets hotter if I place the two drives on top of each other. It's so hot that I can't put it on my lap! So instead, I laid them out side-by-side. Sometimes I event put a pen/pencil under the drive so that it's slightly tilted to the side - this allows air to circulate under, which actually works and cools down the drive - slightly.

2. Maybe it's my setup, but these two drives gets confused when they're BOTH connected/daisy-chained to my PowerBook. I even re-named them differently but for some reason, the Apple Backup Utility 3.0 keeps backing up the destination files to Drive #2 Backup, even after I selected Drive #1 (I want it the other way around). I've done this repeatedly and it keeps reverting to the other drive (itself) as the destination drive. I even switched cable interfaces, plugged in one after the other, turned-off Time Machine, etc. - didn't make a difference. The only way to backup files (using the Apple Backup Utility) is to UNPLUG the Time Machine drive so that it will only recognize the other. Very strange. I've never seen this before and I've owned many, many Firewires drives that's daisy chained. Alternatively, both drives can still be connected together and I can just skip the Apple Backup Utility and MANUALLY drag files to the other (but that defeats the purpose of the incremental backup utility, right??). I shouldn't have to guess which modified files needs backing up as it can get tedious and confusing after a while.

3. The EMC Retrospect Express (backup utility) that it came with as a bonus (free) is a piece of garbage. YES IT'S FREE BUT A PIECE OF GARBAGE. The "modal" interface sucks and it looks like it was created from a Windows import 10 years ago. We're in Snow Leopard days now, if you haven't noticed. I've seen better and more elegant interfaces from freeware/shareware programs. It's not Iomega's fault, of course, but couldn't they find a better OEM solution??

4. OK, maybe this is not a problem but an advantage (with a caveat). This drive is TOO light. Yes, it's so light that the cables daisy-chained weighs down the back portion of the drives, tilting it backwards! WORD OF CAUTION - don't place these drives at the edge of your table with cables dangling. A child or pet could easily pull down the cables with little energy.

It's been a month and I'm very satisfied with these drives. Other than the above annoyances, this is a winner!

Review from Review from Amazon

Reviewer: E. Aguilar| Date:2009-12-01

I am yet another customer with a story about the overly-advertised aluminum enclosure falling apart. I ordered a 320 GB drive from Amazon and the aluminum casing came off as I was removing the drive from its packaging. I tried my luck again with a 500GB from Best Buy and the same thing happened. I refastened the casing this time and used the drive just to test it out. After a half an hour it ran hot enough for the adhesive holding the case on to melt and the casing once again popped off. Considering that this has happened twice with the same product from two different vendors, and the fact that there are other posts here to corroborate my experience, I can safely say that the Iomega ego Mac edition has a serious design flaw. I would caution anyone from wasting their time with it until this issue is figured out.

As an aside, I got to look inside the drive and saw that the actual storage is produced by seagate. So when you buy an iomega ego mac edition, you're really just buying a seagate drive in a cheap casing (that doesn't even stay on). Really, stay away from this product.

Review from Review from Amazon