Thumb sized Mini Hard Drive
Written: Oct 03 '03 (Updated Oct 03 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast, no drivers needed for most computers, small
Cons: cost
The Bottom Line: Great when continually transfering data to different computers.
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| dandino's Full Review: Iomega Mini USB Drive (128 MB) (32548) |
Let me first give you an idea for what I need this for. I work in a research lab. I take a lot of pictures under a microscope and scan in a lot of data. I work on several different computers depending on what equipment I need to use. The initial pictures I take can be enormous (13 MB for a single picture) and I can take several hundred in a day. Needless to say computer memory is always an issue in the daily running of a lab. We also have a mixture of PC’s and Mac’s of various operating systems. Recently we’ve been running into a lot of problems with transferring data. This computer doesn’t recognize the zip drive, this computer doesn’t recognize this disk, this computer can’t run the projector, can’t have more than 1 drive in place on the laptop. Computers were getting to be a big pain in the butt. We realized we could alleviate some of our problems by getting some USB drives.
One of the lab members did a lot of research into all the different brands (Lexar, Dell, Iomega, and a couple others) and also talked to the computer technician for our department and the final decision was to get everyone in the lab 128MB Iomega Mini disks.
One day our UPS man comes, and everybody is ecstatic, a new toy. They came in simple packaging that was quite difficult to open; luckily I had my Swiss army knife. Not too much came in the package, just the drive, and a small instruction booklet. I was surprised to see a lack of drivers on a CD. How did it feel? It’s less than a half inch thick, and about 2.5 inches long, 3/4 of an inch across, give or take. I don’t have a ruler. It’s smaller than my thumb. The cover of the USB port has a shirt clip on it. This is great for dorks that like pocket protectors as you can proudly display IOMEGA right next to the little alligator on your shirt pocket. It also comes with a little attachment so that you can put this on your keys. I’m sorry, but I find this fantastically stupid. The last thing that I want is for this to be jostling around in my pocket with my keys, the cover comes off, and something gets rammed into the USB. No thanks. Luckily, the key chain attachment slides right off. Which again, I find stupid, it was so easy to remove, I can’t see anyone relying on it to hold onto the drive. But this part is completely removable and it’s out of my way. No harm, no foul. Otherwise, it’s simply gray with red trim.
I instantly started to play. Its speed was fantastic. It needed no installation (on my iMac). It was able to bounce between PC and Mac with ease. This was the biggest reason why we got this device. But there was a hitch. My pathetic iMac could not “eject” the drive. I could easily pull it out and bring it to another computer. The problem was that when I tried to plug it back into my computer, it would not be recognized because it was not ejected properly. I had no problem on this sort with any of the PC’s or other Mac’s in the lab. It turns out that this error only happened when you directly save a file to the drive or open a file from it. I just had to back up my hard drive this morning and found that if you only use the mini disk for direct file transfer, the iMac will be able to eject it. Another lab member had an identical problem with her eMac. But I digress; this is a problem with iMac’s and eMac’s, but not the drive itself.
I find this to be fantastically convenient because there is no format issue with the drive. Simply plug it in and go. I was able to bring home a bunch of papers on the mini disk to my Gateway at home, instant recognition and I was off transferring files. Of course, mac’s do not save any files as *.xxx so you need to know the extension when going from mac to PC and then add the .xxx to your file name in order for your PC to recognize the file.
So far I have used this drive successfully on Win 2000, XP, Mac 9.2. It does not work, however, with Mac 9. I spent a while trying to download a driver for it, but could neither find it on the Iomega nor the Apple sight. When I looked at Iomega driver download section, it kept telling me how to buy one. Very annoying.
Iomega makes this in varying sizes for varying prices. The smallest is 64MB for $40, the largest being 1GB for $380. There is also a variety of USB 1.1 and 2.0. They are all the same size and look exactly the same.
I would highly recommend this to anyone who needs to bounce from computer to computer for work or school. You don’t need to worry about formats, drivers, compatible disk drives, or wearing the disk out by re-writing too many times. I would not recommend this as any form of data backup, it is simply too expensive. You can store info on a CD for $0.25 per 700MB depending on the rebate you get.
I believe the lab paid $60 per drive
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
dandino
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Location: Long Island, NY
Reviews written: 49
Trusted by: 7 members
About Me:
I like tools and electronic gizmos.
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