Review on Iomega 33983 eGo Rugged Portable Hard Drive - Jet Black (160GB, USB 2.0) by Robert Lee

This is my third Iomega. The first was a 40GB Silver portable drive. Worked great for over a year and I gave it to my son so he can finally back up his WinXP system. Then I bought a 120GB USB/Firewire Silver Portable and it worked great for over a year and then was just sent to a backup computer so I could buy a bigger one, my first Iomega, not the Silver Portable. I have read complaints about Western Digital, Maxtor and others on Revain regarding some very important shortcomings such as: B. Noisy operation, failure after a few months and not enough power from the USB port, then think about it. This drive is very quiet, drawing only about 100mA from a standard 500mA USB port. You have probably read that in Windows XP it is important to format your USB hard drive with NTFS file system and then set it in Device Manager's Policies tab. "Optimize performance". That is absolutely correct and deserves a mention. This way you get maximum speed and have nothing to lose except compatibility with Windows 95, 98 and ME. What are they you ask? ;>) In addition, the drive has 8 MB of cache, which gives it such high performance. Compared to my other Iomega Silver Portables, this drive should be more shock resistant, but I don't plan on ever testing that. On the other hand, it is larger and cannot be put in a shirt pocket like the others. It's just a bit longer, wider and heavier - no problem for a briefcase, a laptop sleeve or even a small lady's handbag. It also runs a little warmer. Not hot at all, but I'm just spoiled for other Iomegas that work better. It doesn't have rubber feet, but it's not particularly slippery either. I'm more comfortable with these items laying them on a pre-cut piece of Rubbermaid non-slip rubberized shelf material, but that might be overdoing it. From other reviews I've read including Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, LaCie and a few others, there doesn't seem to be any other manufacturer that I trust. By no means to disparage this disc, but if I were to buy it again, or buy another one, I would definitely consider a different "Silver". Portable" due to its compactness, cooler temperature and ridiculously low power consumption via the USB port. At the time of this writing they are still available from Revain but will be sold out in the near future. They are: 1. Model 33634 - USB /Firewire 120$100GB (I already have one) 2. Model 33600 - USB 160GB $80 Finally the software The disk comes with a license for some backup software licensed by Iomega Backup software is very difficult to trust, and usually you don't know how powerful it is until your hard drive crashes or a virus eats you alive.The time of crisis is a little late to be disappointed in your backup software.I strongly recommend that you use the software Study Acronis True Image software carefully I have it as well as some friends and it doesn't disappoint Works even on a PC with one hard drive and RAID1 drives, if you like that means something. Probably the only PC program that does this. It even comes with a bootable CD version, which backups slower than the installed version but can be very handy. I've exhausted myself and this review is long. Thank you for reading. I hope I was helpful. Sam