IOMEGA EGO DESKTOP HARD DRIVE (1TB)

Roomy, No-Frills Storage




The Iomega eGo Desktop is a 1-terabyte desktop-class hard drive that offers a lot of storage for not a lot of money. Its styling and features share similari- ties with the smaller, pocket-size Iomega eGo hard drives.

The hip-flask-shaped, painted metal chassis measures 1.8 by 4.8 by 8 inches (HWD) and comes in blue, red, and black. The drive doesn't come with any loaded software (leaving the entire 1TB at your disposal) but you can download the Retrospect Express HI) simple backup software from !omega's Web site.

The software is Windows only, but Mac users can always fall back on Time Machine if they're running Mac OS 10.5. Also, to use this drive with a Mac, you must reformat the drive to HFS+. In terms of performance, this drive is fairly speedy It took only 49 seconds to copy our 1.2GB test folder via Windows drag-and-drop. The Retrospect software took quite a bit longer, 2:02, because it does a post-copy verification and stores files in its own format.



The eGo's score of 3,477 on PCMark05'sHDD test showed it to be much faster than other pocket drives, which usually score less than 3,000. Compared with a 500GB pocket drive like the Seagate FreeAgent Go, the eGo is a lot cheaper on a per-gigabyte basis. And all things considered, it's a decent drive in an attractive case, at a good price. But businesses and those who want more robust backup software should look elsewhere for a more complete package.—Joel Santo Domingo

PC Magazine February 2009