• Iomega UltraMax 1TB [Review]

    Iomega UltraMax 1TB [Review]

    Jayesh Limaye, Dec 16, 2009 1030 hrs IST

    Sporting quadruple interface, this is a really versatile backup drive

    Stylish looks, multiple interfaces, excellent write and read speeds, software bundle

    Very expensive, no backup button, software bundle has to be downloaded

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The Drive



The drive comes packed in a nice red and white cardboard box.

The UltraMax has a striking resemblance to the Mac Pro, sporting the same shape with lustrous aluminum casing. It even goes to the extent of including two handles at the top, just that it is much smaller in size. Iomega has tried hard to drive the point home that the UltraMax is preferentially targeting Mac users. The Iomega logo is nicely embossed on both sides of the drive. The build quality is excellent and the exterior is resistant to scratches. It is quite heavy and is therefore not meant to be carried around.

There are perforations on both ends to facilitate free flow of air so that the desktop hard drive inside remains cool. The front has a glass window behind, where there is a white LED to indicate power status and a blue LED indicating disk activity.



All the ports are present at the back and they are well-spaced out so as to not interfere with each other. At the top is the power button, below which there is the FireWire 400 port. Below this there are two FireWire 800 ports followed by a USB 2.0 port and an eSATA port. The power connector is present near the bottom. Just beside the USB port is a Kensington lock to tether the drive to your desk for security. Unlike an external drive with a laptop hard drive, a separate power supply is required because of the higher power requirements of the desktop hard drive.




As can be seen above, the reported capacity of the drive in Windows Properties is 931 GB. The drive comes preformatted with HFS+, so it is ready to use with a Macintosh. You can also use it with a Windows PC or any other OS by formatting it to the appropriate file system.

The drive boasts of 1TB capacity, which is enough for every backup purpose. There is a 3.5-inch Seagate Barracuda LP ST310005 20AS 5900 RPM laptop hard drive inside the enclosure. The 5900 RPM means that it consumes lower power than a normal 7200 RPM hard drive and the performance hit cannot be felt because it is the USB 2.0 interface, which is the bottleneck here, and the drive inside is not much of a factor.

Software

As mentioned before, the software is not present on the drive or bundled along, but you can download the backup software EMC Retrospect Express, which is available as a bundled download package with this drive, from the website.

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Iomega UltraMax 1TB Review backup drive Iomega external hard drive portable storage laptop hard drive quadruple interface stylish hard drive Mac Pro Macintosh Apple



Discussion Board
(3) Comments
somenath ghosh
,Saltlake, on Dec 16, 2009 02:17 PM
this is good for mobile
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Ganesh
,City, on Dec 16, 2009 11:50 AM
Stylish looks, good features, 1 TB . But too pricey - for that one buy Transcend External Case with Esata and plug an Seagate 1 TB - it will costs only 6.5k. No need of Firewire as Esata is more used than firewire and is more faster than it.
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Bhasker
,Mumbai, on Dec 16, 2009 11:24 AM
Typo.. " As can be seen above, the reported capacity of the drive in Windows Properties is 931 MB." MB???
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