Iomega HDD External Desktop 80 GB USB 2.0 Hard Drive

Pros: Great price, USB 1.1 compatible, good utilities included.
Cons: Odd little screech noise every 10 minutes. (Just a nit....)

I have a P3-500 machine that came with a 20GB hard drive, which is plenty of space for my day-to-day needs. Previously, we had another computer in the house which had 2 hard drives in it, and I was backing up both machines to the extra disk in the second ...

Pros: Small, compact, light, quick.
Cons: Non-existent support.

One of the December 02 out -of warranty Iomega 120 GB HDs has failed (will not mount.) There is no way to reach or contact Iomega. Their web page support seems good until you have such serious problems. The advertised "4 hour turn-around" for trouble shooting has not yet - after 4 days - yielded any response. There is, of course, no phone number to call.

Pros: Plug and play. Fast.
Cons: Dead after one year. No help with tech support. no means of salvaging data.

For the record, I've never given a bad review on epinions. I needed a hard drive to store video and audio media. The Iomega HDD was something I was looking for. A great feature of the Iomega was its ability to switch its cords from USB to Firewire (the firewire cable is extra). It was plug and play and for about a year, I was very satisfied.

Then one file got corrupted and the whole thing crashed. The computer crashes each time I attach the drive to it. I've tried Disk Doctor, Norton Utilities, many other disk repair software and taken it to several places to see if they can fix it.. no can do. I lost several gigs of items I may never get again. Exactly what a drive shouldn't do.

UPDATE: January 22, 2005
For anyone who's experienced the same thing I have, I do have good news. I recently plugged the Iomega HDD into a windows computer and it was recognized. The problem has to do with overloading the drive. I deleted some stuff and now my mac can recognize it. Still, it's something that shouldn't happen. I find LaCie to be superior to Iomega.

Pros: small, fast, easy to use, trouble-free, inexpensive
Cons: unusual On/Off system

I have owned my hard drive for about a year now. It has proved to be fast, dependable and trouble-free. Installation was quick and unproblematic. I use it every week for regular backups of photos and documents and have never had any trouble. The On/Off functions took a bit of getting used to. The electrical power cord stays plugged in. Connecting the USB cable to a USB port turns the hard drive on. To turn it off you must unplug the cable from the USB port and press the Off switch. An easily accessible USB port is important, unless you want to leave the hard drive on and idling while you are using your computer. I don't want to, since I use it infrequently. Any files I have on the external hard drive I back up on rewritable DVDs.

Pros: none
Cons: Don't waste your money on IOMEGA

Very disappointed....Bought and used primarily for back up purposes,On my (4th)only back up, problems started...Called support,unit has a defect, IOMEGA replaced brand new unit with reman unit. Again on the (4th) back up, unit malfunctioned again, same problem (computer no longer recognized drive). Unit now just out of warranty and IOMEGA refuses to address the problem...I was lucky enough to get only 8 back up sessions and now in the garbage, very costly mistake buying IOMEGA product.Beware

Pros: Set up is a snap. Does job. Reasonable Price. Quiet, efficient.
Cons: Haven't any.

After some four months, no problems. Works. Easy to set up and easily moved from computer to computer. All I asked for. I wanted a dependable external drive that was easy to set up and use. This fills the bill. Haven't tried customer support because I haven't needed it. My past dealings with iomega have been great.

Pros: The HD unit seems to be well made with a heavy duty power supply.
Cons: Could never use. Worst experience I've ever had with a hard drive.

I expended a huge amount of time attempting to use an IOMEGA 80 GB Ext Hard Drive on three different desktop PC's.
The HD came from a good friend who has had many years of computer experience.

Two PC's had Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 2 installed; third PC had Windows 2000 Professional. All three PC's were connected to a DSL Linksys Router. All PC operating systems were completely up-to-date with Microsoft OS Software.

Absolutely could NEVER use the HD. Even though drilling down in Control Panel, System, Hardware Devices, the unit was listed but I could never generate a Hard Drive letter - "F:" for example, never created an icon.

Pros: Worked fine on Windows 2000 PC for 2 1/2 years
Cons: Began to falter on Windows XP, eventually stopped working

I used my 80GB Iomega external hard drive without incident to backup my PC. I used it on Windows 2000 for 2 1/2 years. No problems whatsoever. But then I upgraded to Windows XP and weird things started happening -- like I couldn't boot up my computer if the external hard drive was plugged in, and it would tie up my computer for 10 minutes or longer while the computer identified the contents of the Iomega device. Iomega wasn't able to diagnose or fix the problem -- the patch they gave me didn't help. Then a few weeks ago the Iomega device began to falter. It churns and makes a lot of noise but my computer can't see the attached device. We tried it on a couple of computers, with the same problem in both cases. Iomega tech support said "Maybe you need to buy a replacement power supply." I don't trust that advice. I'm going to buy a whole new device.