USB Thumbdrives are nice, but there are times when they just aren’t big enough. Yes they are getting bigger, but not like hard drives, if you need to transport or store large amounts of data a hard drive is the way to go.

Today for review I’ve got the Iomega Silver Portable Hard Drive, it’s a 2.5" drive with a 160GB capacity and a USB interface. It comes in a nice silver enclosure that is supposed to protect it from damages and included with the drive is useful piece of software to help you backup your files.

No video for you today, just the regular old still pictures…

The box for the Iomega Silver Portable Hard Drive is covered with information, and a few pictures.

The drive is packed fairly well, I was expecting some sort of foam packing, but they’ve got the hard drive sort of floating in there on a cardboard platform, I guess that works.

Included with the hard drive is a USB cable, software disc and user manual.

There’s not much special about the hard drive case really, it’s silver as the name suggests and it seems well made, it’s fairly heavy for such a small drive. On the back end is the USB port, optional power connection and an LED indicator.

Specifications:

Silver Portable Hard Drive

Iomega 160gb 2.5" Silver Portable Hard Drive USB

Perfect for the mobile professional, the pocketsized Iomega Portable hard Drive requires no external power supply – just plug it and go. With Drop Shock technology, it is rugged enough to safely store large amounts of data.

Iomega’s Portable Hard Drive is sleeker than ever before! Take files and applications anywhere! This portable hard drive requires no external power supply—just plug it in and go. It’s a high capacity travel companion that lets you take your important files, photos and music anywhere—a perfect storage solution for the mobile professional.

At-A-Glance:
* Easy to Use—no external power supply required
* Compact—Fits easily into a shirt or briefcase pocket
* Secure—Professional level backup and disaster recovery software included
* Durable—Drop shock technology included

What You Get:
* Iomega Portable Hard Drive
* Connnection Cable
* Supplemental power cord
* Quick Install Guide
* HTML User Manual and Help Files
* Backup software
* One year warranty
Price: $74.99

I was curious as to what’s inside so I popped it open, I was half expecting an IDE drive, but it’s actually an SATA hard drive. It’s a Seagate Momentus 5400.3 drive to be exact.

It’s very easy to use, just plug it in and you’re ready to go, it was already formatted to FAT32 when it arrived, the LED indicator lights up when powered on of course.

For comparison I’ve got another SATA 160GB 2.5" hard drive in a Vizo Shuttle enclosure, it also happens to be a Seagate Momentus 5400.3 hard drive. So the drives are the same, but the chips aren’t so that’s what we’re comparing here today.

First up is SiSoft Sandra 2009 SP2 Removable Storage Benchmark

They’re the same drives but we’ve got different performance, as we can see the Iomega clearly wins out.

Next up is DiskBench disk test, we’re testing the Copy To, Copy From and read From speeds of both drives. I used a 350MB .AVI video file for all tests.

First graph is times, so lower would be better of course:

Very close times for both drives, but the Iomega leads by a few 10ths of seconds.

Here’s the actual transfer rates in MB/s for the above test, higher is better.

As you can see the transfer rates of the Iomega are a bit faster overall.

Iomega did include backup software with the hard drive, it’s called EMC Retrospect Express and here’s a little info I grabbed from the EMC site:

EMC Retrospect Express Edition is available exclusively with leading hardware manufacturer backup devices and is designed for home environments. It protects a single Windows or Macintosh desktop or notebook computer by backing up to internal and external hard drives and CD/DVDs. Retrospect Express delivers proven data protection capabilities in an easy-to-use software package.

If you wish you can visit the EMC site HERE to read the full information about the software.

The interface is rather simple but it does provide a very important service, and that’s to backup and protect your data.

The main features are Backup, Duplicate and Disaster Recovery. Backup is self explanatory, while Duplicate is kind of like a manual Raid with an external drive, it creates a duplicate of the hard drive. Disaster Recovery is after you’ve made your backup, you then can create a CD to help restore your computer. Overall it seems like a very good piece of software.

 

There’s really nothing wrong with the product, I could say that it’s only USB, but I think everyone by now has a USB port so it’s universally compatible. I could say it would be nice to have a case with it, but the enclosure seems very well made and durable so it should protect the drive very well.

Conclusion:
The Iomega Silver Portable Hard is a nice choice when you need to transfer large amounts of data to and from places, and it also makes a nice backup drive as well. The speeds seem to be very good, and the included software is a nice added bonus to help protect your precious files.

Pros:
Fast transfers
Well made enclosure
Aesthetically pleasing

Cons:
None really

Grades:
Overall
Design
Performance