Portable External Hard Drives

Amazon offers this unit for less than some big-box stores. Another good reason to buy from Amazon. Always remember that outfits like iomega, LaCie, Fantom and others are packagers, not hard drive manufacturers. There are only a few hard drive manufacturers and all of them turn out good products. This does not mean that hard drives don’t fail – they do and anyone who keeps only one copy of critical data is a fool. The units I purchased both had current models of Seagate Barracuda drives installed: excellent devices. Right now, the drives themselves from some sources cost only a few dollars less than the iomega unit, so you are getting the external housing for just a few dollars. The housing has a power switch, very nice at a time when other manufacturers are eliminating such “frills” and a white activity light on the side, which strikes me as a strange place for it. Since the housing has no fan, there is no fan noise. The noise from the drive itself should be imperceptible. (If it isn’t, return the unit immediately. )The housing remains cool to the touch in use. The unit size is nice and a plastic base is included for those who prefer a vertical mounting. A power supply and USB cable round out the package. One of the very nice aspects of this unit is that there is no software installed on the drive – nor is any included in the box. Yea! The drive comes NTFS formatted and, for use with an Apple Macintosh, must be reformatted. Overall, a very nice value. Jerry

5.0 out of 5 stars
Very impressed
Super simple to use, plug in and drop and drag. Does NOT run off USB power. The unit does get rather warm, and does not have an internal fan, so I use a small desktop fan just to…

I stopped using Iomega products several years ago (remember the infamous “click of death” infesting Iomega Zip drives?) But after reading the Amazon reviews, I decided to get the Iomega 1TB drive. It is about half the size of my old 350 MB Maxtor hard drives, costs half as much, and has three times the storage capacity! I plugged it in and Windows XP had it up and running in seconds, no fuss. As a test, I transferred two gigs of photos (I’m a photojournalist) and it backed up two gigs in two minutes. It is almost perfectly silent. I didn’t bother downloading the free Retrospect Backup software; I always back up manually as part of my business routine. If I ever have a problem with this drive, I’ll update this review. Otherwise, I rate it as a perfect high-capacity drive, period.

I’ve had the Prestige for a little over 2 weeks now. It works great. -There’s No annoying software (like my friend’s WD Mybook) -Runs super quiet -I’ve had it on for hours at a time and it only gets a little warm -It’s got a cool stand -It has a power switch I’ve been very impressed thus far and would highly recommend this hard drive. Only downside is its actually about 465 gigs, but most hard drives are like that. The reason I say so far is externals seem to be prone to crashing if you read reviews. Hopefully it lasts forever though. Again, Sweet hard drive. Edit: I’ve had it for almost 4 months now and it is still excellent.

5.0 out of 5 stars
VA in Minnesota
The product was shipped quickly and arrived without any damage. I attached the power cord and USB cable. I read and followed the instructions.

5.0 out of 5 stars
Easy to set up
I purchased this drive a few weeks ago. It was easy to set up and transfer data. So far I haven’t had any problems and hopefully I won’t!